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NEW LIFE IN NEW LANDS: 



Notes of Travel. 



BY 



GRACE GREENWOOD, r^. 




NEW YORK: 
J. B. FORD AND COMPANY. 

1873. 



Entered according to Act of Congress, in the year 1872, 

BY J. B. FORD AND COMPANY, 

in the OflBce of the Librarian of Congress, at Washington. 






University Press: Welch, Bigelow, & Co., 
Cambridge 



p? 



DEDICATORY. 



I WOULD especially inscribe this book, with my love, 
to two good women and true, in whose expansive 
cottage-homes much of it was written, — Mrs. Mary 
Byers of Denver, and '-Mrs. Sarah M. Clarke of 
San Francisco. 

GRACE GREENWOOD. 



A FEW WORDS BY WAY OF 
PREFACE. 



THE volume which I have the temerity to bring 
as a Httle offering to the great American 
public is my first offence in the book line for some 
years. It is surely not a grave offence, being com- 
posed of light letters, contributed during the last eigh- 
teen months to the " New York Times." They were 
written irregularly and hurriedly, in brief intervals of 
travel, visiting, lecturing, and sight - seeing. Unfortu- 
nately a severe illness in the late summer and early 
autumn prevented me from giving them the careful 
revision they greatly needed. They go into print the 
second time with all their old sins on their heads, — 
the " original sin " of having been a journal of travel 
over well-traveled paths ; " sins of omission " in matter 
of philosophic thought and valuable statistics ; " sins of 
commission " in the way of puns and slang and " fool- 
ish jesting which is not convenient." 



VI PREFACE. 



Still, as a happy record of a period of rare enjoy- 
ment, of experiences fresh and bright and sweet to 
me ; as an absolutely truthful picture of life as I 
saw it in the great Western Territories and the grand 
Pacific State, I commend it to the dear and generous 
friends here and yonder for whom I kept the record, 
whose kindness gave to the picture its best brightness 
and beauty. I commend it to them with loving trust, 
and with respectful confidence to the rest of man- 
kind. 

If from some of the richest poetic treasure-fields of 
the world I have brought only rock-crystals of fancy 
and sentiment, I hope they are good articles of their 
kind, and I do not call them diamonds. 

G. G. 

Chicago, December, 1872. 



CONTENTS. 

Page 

Chicago as it was 7 

Colorado 26 

Utah 131 

Nevada 172 

California 188 

Homeward Journey 384 

Colorado in Autumn 401 




CHICAGO AS IT WAS. 



Chicago, July 12, 1871. ' : 

IN fast and friendly Chicago, weeks go by like 
days, and days like hours, and life is almost 
too rapid to be chronicled. The " glorious Fourth " 
has already faded into the dim distance. I remem- 
ber, however, that it was a perfect day, even in 
a pic-nickian sense. We spent it out of town, 
some eight miles to the westward, on the prairie, 
at a gentleman's pretty country seat, — feasting 
and disporting under noble ancestral trees, some 
of them as much as four years old ! It was fine 
exercise dodging about under them to catch the 
flickering shade. But we were quite as jolly as 
we could have been under the olives of Albano, 
the cedars of Warwick, or the big pines of Cali- 
fornia. I have been from Chicago some four years, 
and in that time its growth and improvement have 
been absolutely marvellous. It grows on Indepen- 



N 



8 CHICAGO AS IT WAS. 

dence days and Sabbath days and all days. It 
grows o' nights. Its enterprise, daring, and vigi- 
lance storm the land and fetter the sea, defy and 
override physical laws, and circumvent nature. A 
great part of the west side of the city seems to 
me to have been heaved up out of the mud by a 
benevolent earthquake. I see beautiful and stately 
marble buildings where four years ago were the 
humble little domiciles of the Germans, or the com- 
fortless shanties of the Irish emigrants. What were 
then wastes of sand and rubbish and weeds are now 
lovely public squares or parks, with hard, smooth 
drives, ponds, rocks, hillocks, rustic bridges and 
seats, pretty vine-shaded arbors, and the usual park 
accompaniments of tame bears and caged eagles. 

All this rapid change and progress is as myste- 
rious as it is marvellous, till you know a regular, gen- 
uine Chicagoan, and see him go about his business 
with a drive, a devotion, a matchless economy of 
time and means, which stop just short of hurry and 
greed, — of the desperate and the sordid. The very 
struggle which the men of Chicago have always 
waged against adverse natural conditions has been 
to a degree ennobUng, and has lifted their lives above 



DRAINAGE. 



the commonplace. It is essentially heroic ; it is 
something titanic ; it is more creation than devel- 
opment. Foot by foot, inch by inch, they have 
gained on swampy flats, on oozing clay-banks, on 
treacherous sand-heaps. Every year has chronicled 
new enterprises, new triumphs. The sluggish, mias- 
matic waters, once all abroad, have been driven back, 
and headed off, and hemmed in, and at last brought 
to bay in the horrible little river that now creeps in 
a Stygian flood through the city it does its best to 
poison and pollute, while sullenly bearing back and 
forth rich burdens of commerce. But the hour has 
almost come when that ill-famed stream must take 
the back track, — double on itself, — actually run up 
its channel, and through the Illinois Canal into the 
Illinois River, and so down into the Mississippi. 
Then Lake Michigan, who does a great deal of 
mischief for lack of better employment, will have a 
heavier job to perform in the cleansing line than the 
rivers Peneus and Alpheus together accomplished 
for Augeas ; and Hercules the canal-digger of Elis 
will be outdone by one Chesebrough. 

I remember the reply of a Washington candidate 
for the civil service to the question, " Into what do 
I* 



CHICAGO AS IT WAS. 



the Northern lakes empty ? " It was, " Into the 
Gulf of Mexico." We smiled at that answer ; but 
the time draws nigh when it shall be vindicated and 
verified. The young man was a prophet. He spoke 
for posterity and Chicago. We are all waiting the 
great experiment with anxiety, as once we hung with 
wild expectations on the ditching at Yorktown and 
the opening of the canals at Vicksburg and Dutch 
Gap. If it succeeds, it will doubtless be a grand 
thing for Chicago ; but what will it do for the unfor- 
tunate people who live along the line of the canal > 
It is said that a ship canal through the Isthmus 
of Darien may turn the course of the Gulf Stream, 
and make of England a boreal waste. Is it not pos- 
sible that this new enterprise of engineering will 
desolate a smiling country by sending off travelling 
the fearful smells of this monster sewer, to sicken 
the sweetest day and hold high carnival at night ? 
Of course, it depends on the present character of the 
Illinois Canal, for cleanliness and wholesomeness, 
whether the union be a suitable one. If it were our 
Washington Canal, I certainly should not forbid the 
banns. 

But for a pleasanter theme. Lincoln Park, on 



THE PARKS. II 



the north side, is perhaps the most striking and ap- 
parently magical of all the enterprises and improve- 
ments of the city. It is already very beautiful, with 
a variety of surface and ornamentation most wonder- 
ful, when we remember that scarcely five years ago 
the spot was a dreary waste of drifting sand and 
unsightly weeds. The manner in which these elusive 
sands, full of the restlessness of the waves from 
which they have been rescued, are fixed and fettered 
is very curious. Boards, stones, sticks, leaves, weeds, 
are laid on them, then clay is added, and so soil 
enough created to be sown or planted. The modest 
elevations called "hills," by courtesy, are also, I 
am told, " fearfully and wonderfully made " out of 
the most unsightly refuse and rubbish ; so that, if 
future savanSy taking them for Indian mounds, shall 
ever excavate one, they may perhaps come upon 
distinct strata of oyster-shells, tin fruit-cans, old 
shoes, and broken crockery, with a substratum of 
hoop-skirts. No means, however humble, for break- 
ing and elevating the surface are despised. I should 
not be surprised to hear that moles were protected 
by game-laws. To obtain water for ponds and foun- 
tains they have made a requisition on the secret res- 



CHICAGO AS IT WAS, 



ervoirs of Nature, — on hidden streams that from 
unknown sources, perhaps as far away as the Rocky- 
Mountains, have been for ages groping their way 

" Through caverns measureless to man, 
Down to a sunless sea." 

They come forth into the light and the sweet, vital 
upper air, leaping and shouting, and make haste to 
join in the great, busy, restless life around them. 
Those artesian wells, with the lake-tunnels, will yet 
make Chicago .more than the rival of Rome in 
fountains and baths, and in that cleanliness which 
is next to godliness. The great drive on the lake 
shore, from Chicago to Evanston, will be another 
wonder, only surpassed by the system of continuous 
boulevards and parks, a complete circumvallation 
of the city, which at no distant day will furnish one 
of the grandest drives in the world. Citizens of 
Atlantic cities say they miss their grand rocks and 
hills, and the sea, "that symbol of the infinite." 
But Lake Michigan is a respectable bit of water ; 
and the prairie has a beauty and even a grandeur 
of its own. If a cornfield of several thousand acres 
is not "a symbol of the infinite," I should like to 
know what is. The present entrance to Lincoln 



ROADS AND BUILDINGS. I3 

Park is a little depressing, being through a cemetery, 
but those old settlers are fast being unsettled and 
re-established elsewhere. Even the dead must 
" move on " in Chicago. It were impossible for one 
to tell where in this vicinity he could take his last 
sleep. Chicago houses are all liable to be moved, 
even the ''house of worship" and "the house ap- 
pointed for all living." A moving building has 
ceased to be a moving sight here. Not only do 
small frame cottages, that a year or two ago were 
in quiet rural localities, take fright at the snort and 
the rush of advancing trade, and prance off to 
"fresh fields and pastures new," but substantial 
brick edifices sometimes migrate. A few years ago 
a Baptist church, on Wabash Avenue, saw fit to 
change sides, and came over — in several pieces to 
be sure — to the corner of Monroe and Morgan 
Streets, where it now stands, looking as decorous 
and settled and close-communion as ever. 

The parks of the west side, patriotically and demo- 
cratically named *' Union " and 'Jefferson," though re- 
minding one somewhat, by their modest dimensions, 
ingenious contrivances, and artifices of rock and 
water and hillock and bridge (with a "real flag- 



14 CHICAGO AS IT WAS. 

Staff" and "real flag"), of the pious devices of 
John Wemmick for the amusement of " the aged," 
are yet sources of incalculable enjoyment and good 
for all who live in their pleasant vicinity. Wooden 
pavements, splendid macadamized roads, and the 
new boulevards are fast bringing the beautiful subur- 
ban settlements of Lake View, Kenwood, and Hyde 
Park into the municipal fold. The city is bear- 
ing down upon them at a tremendous rate, and the 
roar of traffic will soon drown for them through the 
day the deep sweet monotone of the lake. In the 
heart of the town Chicago is making worthy prepar- 
ations to entertain the great floating population of 
the world setting westward. The work on the new 
Pacific Hotel goes bravely on. I do not quite like 
the location, and the court-yard seems to me too 
small for so immense a caravansery. I am sorry to 
hear that it is proposed to change its name in order 
to do honor to one of its most munificent proprietors. 
No man's name seems to me big enough for such a 
hotel, — not Montmorency, nor Metamora, nor Ho- 
henzollern, nor Hole-in-the-Day, nor Frelinghuysen, 
nor Lippincott. The old court-house has taken to 
itself wings to meet the great rush of business in the 



ALL ASTIR, 



15 



murder and divorce line ; and I hear much of Potter 
Palmer's new hotel, which is to be a monster affair, 
capable of accommodating an old-fashioned German 
principality, to say the least. 

In short, all is astir here. There is no such thing 
as stagnation or rest. Lake-winds and prairie-winds 
keep the very air in commotion. You catch the 
contagion of activity and enterprise, and have wild 
dreams of beginning life again, and settling — no, 
circulating, whirling — in Chicago, the rapids and 
wild eddies of business have such a powerful fascina- 
tion for one. Chicago postmen sometimes go their 
rounds on velocipedes. Chicago newsboys are pre- 
ternaturally clever and wide-awake. I remember one 
of the most diminutive of the guild, coming on to 
the train as I was sorrowfully departing from the 
city one morning, in war time, and offering to sell 
me a copy of a leading daily, and that I said, 
speaking after the manner of a dark-complexioned 
Republican, '' Why, my poor little fellow, where will 
you go to when you die, if you sell that naughty 
paper } " He turned his curly red head as he 
answered, " O, to the good place, I reckon, for I sell 
rather more Tribitnes than Timeses." 



l6 CHICAGO AS IT WAS. 

I suppose I need hardly say that I like Chicago, — 
like it in spite of lake-wind sharpness and prairie 
flatness, damp tunnels, swinging bridges, hard water, 
and easy divorces. With all the distinctive charac- 
teristics of a great city, it has preserved in a won- 
derful degree the provincial virtues of generous hos- 
pitality, cordiality, and neighborly kindness. A lady 
from the East lately said of it, very charmingly, " It 
is New York with the heart left in." I do not deny 
that the genuine Chicagoan has well learned the 
prayer of the worthy Scotchman, " Lord, gie us a 
guid conceit o' oursels ! " and that the prayer has 
been abundantly answered ; but I do not think that 
his self-satisfaction often amounts to arrogance, or 
inclines him to rest on his laurels or his oars. He 
well knows, I think, that there is small profit in 
gaining the whole world to lose his own soul, and 
beautiful churches and beneficent mission schools, 
quiet deeds of mercy and munificent charities, show 
that he finds ways of ascent into the higher life, 
even from the busy dock, the noisy factory, the grim 
foundry, and the tempestuous Exchange. 

My memory of the journey from Washington, over 
the Northern Central and Pennsylvania Central, is a 



THE WEDDING OF THE RIVERS. 17 

long panorama of surpassing summer beauty, though, 
like Pilgrim, after leaving the " Delectable Moun- 
tains," I had to pass through the " Valley of the 
Shadow of Death " at Pittsburg, and, unlike him, had 
a world of trouble about my baggage. But, dear me, 
it is so long ago, — nearly four weeks ! In that time 
Chicago, very likely, has opened a tunnel, and stolen 
an acre of land from the lake, and drilled an artesian 
well or two, and tossed up several good-sized hills 
in Lincoln Park. 

July 26. 

There was a grand celebration by triumphant 
Chicagoans in honor of the wedding of the Chi- 
cago and Illinois Rivers, — Othello and Desdemona. 
There was a canal-boat excursion — which must 
have seemed like a dream of other days — of the 
city magnates, and all the power of the press, distin- 
guished strangers, and a stray major-general or two, 
and many hundreds of the common people, — that is, 
men not worth over half a million, — all headed by 
his Honor the Mayor. 

They say the going forth of the Doge of Venice to 
wed the Adriatic could never have been a circum- 
stance to this excursion. There may have been more 

B 



l8 CHICAGO AS IT WAS. 

regal pomp and splendor on those old occasions, 
but nothing like the bounteous feeding of yesterday. 
There may have been a richer display of costumes, 
but nothing like the amount of Bourbon and lager 
drunk. 

I need hardly say that the enterprise of regenerat- 
ing the Chicago River is a success, — for of course 
they would n't celebrate a failure, — and Chese- 
brough, the bold engineer, may take up the brave 
iteration of old Galileo, " It moves ! " The great 
deeps of mud and slime and unimaginable filth, the 
breeding-beds of miasms and death-fogs, are being 
slowly broken up, are passing away. One can 
actually perceive a current in the river at some 
points, and straws, after some moments of indecision, 
will show which way it runs. On Monday, washing- 
day. Lake Michigan really buckled down to her 
work, and did wonders in the cleansing line. We 
early drove down to see how far dilution and clarifi- 
cation had proceeded in the thick, black, torpid 
stream, more interested than though about to witness 
the annual miracle of Naples, — the liquefaction of 
the blood of San Gennaro. We noticed first that 
the color of the water had changed from almost inky 



RIVER REGENERATION. I9 

blackness to something of the tawny hue of the 
Tiber after a storm. Then, looking steadily, we per- 
ceived it moving sluggishly, sullenly, as though in 
obedience to an unusual and imperative morning call, 
— a call from the old Father of Waters himself. 

They say there is great rejoicing among the 
millers and manufacturers along the river down by 
Joliet at the increase of water which, even at this dry 
season, sets all their wheels whirling. The change is 
not only a. blessing to factories, but to olfactories. 
There is an immense modification of the peculiar 
overpowering odor which was like what a grand com- 
bination of the " thirty thousand distinct smells " of 
the city of Cologne would be, — an odor that only 
last week sickened the air for half a mile on the lee- 
ward side, and for as far -heavenward, probably, so 
that it would seem impossible a bird of dehcate con- 
stitution could pass through it unharmed. 

If I have given a good deal of space to this river- 
regeneration theme, it is because it does not seem to 
me a matter of mere local interest. With this city's 
unprecedented growth and vast increase of com- 
merce, this river nuisance was becoming more and 
more intolerable and notorious. The fame of it 



20 CHICAGO AS IT WAS. 

went forth to the ends of the earth. The sailor^ 
arriving from foreign parts, snuffed it afar off; out- 
ward bound, he crowded all sail to escape it. 

Last week we took a little trip to the northwest, as 
far as Elgin, to make a visit to the family of Hon. S. 
Eastman, our late Consul to Bristol. On this trip I 
had my first summer prairie-views. All I had seen 
before were winter pictures of vast expanses of snow 
or dull brown turf, inexpressibly monotonous. The 
land between Chicago and Elgin is rolling and con- 
siderably varied by wood and water, richly produc- 
tive and well cultivated. 

To me there is something grand and more than 
princely in the long stretch and wide expanse of pas- 
ture and grain land, and in the absence of the usual 
petty boundaries that make a New England land- 
scape look like a child's dissected map by comparison. 
But it is a hard country, this prairie country, for 
your Helmbolds and Hostetters ; " for miles and 
mileses " not a rock, or stone-wall, or board fence, or 
a " coign of vantage " of any sort. They must pass 
on and leave no sign. But we know well we shall 
meet them at the first stopping-place. There is 
no *' let " to the march of Buchu and Bitters. We 



ELGIN. 



may fondly fancy we have the great medicine-man 
of the day, he for whom toil the airily clad Hotten- 
tots at the Cape of Good Hope, driving his six 
Patchens at Long Branch in a magnificent chariot 
with the excellent partner of his fortunes at his side, 
resplendent with diamonds and other Buchu-terie ; 
but let us go forth in any direction, and we can only 
follow Helmbold. Take the wings of the morning, 
and flee to the uttermost parts of the earth, and 
Helmbold will be there before you. He is a greater 
traveller than the German savant whom the fair New 
York lady confounded him with, when she came before 
the bronze bust in Central Park. The white bear of 
Labrador, the kangaroo of Australia, and the seal 
of Alaska, know Helmbold. Well, all this fortune 
and fame being the simple result of business clever- 
ness and dash, and the reward of virtuous advertis- 
ing, let them increase and keep on increasing as 
long as the Hottentots and the board fences hold out. 
The approach to Elgin, on a bright day, is very 
pleasant and cheering. The Fox River, with its 
clear sparkling water, and lovely green banks, and 
several very respectable hills, are rare and pictu- 
resque features. The whole town has an airy, 



22 CHICAGO AS IT WAS. 

cheery, well-to-do look, — something of the aspect of 
a New England town with a new life let into it. 

Mr. Eastman must have loved the mother coun- 
try well, in spite of the ugly mood the old lady 
was in during the early part of his consulship, 
for he has brought home with him many solid 
mementos of his stay, — hosts of pictures, some 
of them very valuable, books by the thousand, and 
massive mahogany furniture by the ton. It were 
annihilation to a sleeper to have the canopy of 
the bed in the large guest-chamber come down ; 
-but it never will come down. 

Of course we visited the watch-factory, the chief 
lion of Elgin, giving up an entire morning (and 
feeling that it was not half enough) to a delighted 
inspection of the works of the most beautiful 
and wonderful machinery I had ever seen. I am 
not going to attempt a description of what has 
been so often and so thoroughly described. Still, 
I fancy I could do it, unmechanical and unexact 
as is the female brain, for never did mortal wo- 
man question mortal man for three mortal hours 
as I questioned the courteous superintendent whose 
hard lot it was to escort me about on that mem- 



WATCH-MAKING. 23 

orable day. I reduced him to such a state of ex- 
haustion at last, that I am persuaded that, when 
all was over, stimulants had to be applied to him. 
Through his patient and luminous teaching I know 
the watch-making process, from the rough beginning 
to the polished ending. I believe I could put a 
watch together myself, after a fashion. 

But though the curious mechanism of steel and 
brass and gold and precious stones interested me, 
and the marvellous machines, that worked with 
something approaching to the power, the exactness, 
and the solemn quietness of the laws of the Creator, 
interested me, I was still more interested in the 
human mechanism of trained hand and eye, — in 
the human machines that mastered and directed 
all the others. I most enjoyed looking at the 
operatives, — neat, cheerful, earnest, and singularly 
intelligent looking men and women, — and in con- 
trasting them with operatives abroad, thanking 
God for the difference. 

Having always at heart the woman question, 
and preaching everywhere the gospel of equal 
wages for 'equal labor, I dealt with my friend, the 
superintendent, on the subject while going the 



24 CHICAGO AS IT WAS. 

rounds ; and finding that the women, though well 
paid and apparently contented, were not as well 
paid as the men, I felt, as I always do, like stir- 
ring up sedition among my sisters. He said — that 
patient superintendent — that the trouble was, the 
girls would get married and quit work, just per- 
haps as they had become well trained and useful, 
and so were not as valuable and reliable opera- 
tives as men, with whom marriage made no differ- 
ence, except to fix them more steadily in their 
places and at their work. To this I replied, that if 
women had more avenues of labor opened to them, 
and were better paid, they would be less likely to 
marry, — at least in a hurry. There would be an 
end among working-women to the marriage of con- 
venience, — too often a frantic flop "out of the fry- 
ing-pan into the fire." Finding in the engraving- 
room a woman of middle age, engaged in doing 
the same work precisely as the man beside her, I 
came down on the superintendent with all the 
thunders of Steinway Hall ; but he only smiled 
quietly, — meekly, " I thought, — and seemed not to 
have the face to defend himself He afterward 
informed me, however, that the ill-used lady in 



WOMEN S WAGES. 25 

question was, by an exception to the general rule, 
paid exactly the same wages given to the male 
artists with whom she works, rivalling them in 
delicate graving. 

I absolutely longed to linger in this bright, 
cheerful manufactory, — so light that it seemed 
like a crystal palace of industry. Or, I wanted 
just to eat and sleep, and then go back and ask 
a few more questions. I absolutely returned with 
reluctance to Chicago, where they take no note 
of time. 



COLORADO. 



Denver, August 6, 1871. 

KOSSUTH once said : " Watt, with a steam- 
engine, has blotted the word * distance ' from 
the dictionary." This I recalled with a new and 
vivid realization yesterday morning, when I woke 
from my first sleep in Colorado, in full sight of the 
Rocky Mountains, and thought, almost with awe, of 
the vast plains and the strange rivers which lay 
between me and the familiar city of my last month's 
sojourn. 

We took the Rock Island route from Chicago, 
and went through with great comfort. This runs 
through a rich agricultural region, suffering some- 
what, however, at this time, from the drought. 
There was about our train more of the " Pacific " 
than the " Express," as it stopped in a kind and 
obliging manner at every little station. At one 
of the smallest and loneliest I noticed a solitary 



STATION LIFE ON THE PRAIRIES. 27 

trunk put off, — a handsome and huge affair, that 
seemed oddly out of place there. In a few moments 
a group of rough men and boys were gathered about 
it, regarding it with singularly curious yet serious 
looks, as though they suspected it of containing a 
dead body or an infernal machine. The most deso- 
late of these stations is enlivened by the presence of 
children, not always well behaved, not always cleanly, 
but merry and wide-awake. At one, however, I saw 
only a woman sitting at the window of her little 
unshaded house, with her face supported by her 
hands, — a pale, worn, despairing face, though youth- 
ful, looking out through long locks of spiritless yel- 
low hair at the world going by. " Mariana in the 
Moated Grange " is not, to my mind, half so desolate 
a picture as was this. At another station two women 
stood on the platform looking with a friendly in- 
quisitiveness into each car as it slowly moved past. 
When ours — the last — had gone by, I heard one 
of them exclaim dolorously and wonderingly, " Not 
a soul among 'em all what I knowed ! " 

This station life on the prairies of Illinois and 
Iowa has essentially all the loneliness of pioneer life, 
without its dignity, its adventure, and wild freedom. 



28 COLORADO. 



Rich should be the domestic compensations for those 
who endure it. 

A perpetual wonder and delight were the vast 
grain-fields unrolling their mighty expanses of green 
and gold. The bright, fresh, billowy pasture-lands 
of Iowa, in the neighborhood of Omaha, so like 
the English " downs," were very beautiful, and the 
greater part of that afternoon's journey through 
Nebraska, along the Platte River, I remember as 
a series of charming pictures. Omaha somewhat 
disappointed me. It has not so busy and thriving 
a look as I expected. They say it has slackened its 
wild pace considerably during the past year. It 
had grown too fast, — had, in fact, outgrown its 
original seven-league boots. 

Just out of the town we saw a freight train par- 
tially loaded with a hideous cargo, — a lot of dirty, 
lazy, greasy-looking Indians and squaws, — and at 
one of the stations where we stopped for water we 
encountered a tall Pawnee, in a flaming red shirt and 
a peculiarly airy fashion of " breeks," that garment 
being slashed, with nothing inserted in the slashes, 
and with several pendent portions fluttering in the 
evening breeze. His hair was arranged in three long 



THE VALLEY OF THE SHADOW OF DEATH. 29 



chatelaine braids, hanging gracefully down his back. 
He was a " Pashaw of Three Tails," not counting the 
before-mentioned tags of drapery. He announced 
himself as a physician, and, with savage ingenuous- 
ness and love of symbols, he carried a bow and 
arrows. His patients knew what they might expect 
These native gentlemen give a wild flavor to the 
scene, but on the whole I think I prefer the ante- 
lopes and the prairie-dog. 

I suppose these lands of the Platte Valley can 
hardly be called " plains " ; but though not arid and 
desolate, they are sufficiently lonely and sombre. We 
learn that this was the very " Valley of the Shadow 
of Death" to thousands of poor emigrants in the 
early days of California emigration, and in the fearful 
cholera times. It may be that before the locomotive 
came to invade with irreverent noise and hurry this 
haunted ground, to mock at poor perturbed spirits, 
and whistle them down the wind, a seer might have 
beheld, any dreary, starlit night, ghostly trains, moving 
silently, slowly along by this low, dark river ; might 
have seen white, still faces looking out of ghostly 
wagons, drawn by ghostly horses and oxen, noiseless- 
ly treading over the old track, — over the level graves. 



30 COLORADO. 



Some of the new settlements seem wondrously thriv- 
ing, drawing much of their sustenance from an agri- 
cultural district, small and apparently most unprom- 
ising. In one town I noticed, beside the inevitable 
church and school-house and hotel, a bakery, a black- 
smith's shop, a lager-beer saloon, a billiard-hall, and 
a circus-ring. Thus gradually do the blessings of 
civilization creep over this vast, barbarous region ! 

After so long a dry season I was agreeably 
surprised by the very moderate amount of dust we 
raised as we dashed along. I have been far more 
annoyed by it in a single journey from Washington 
to Philadelphia than I was on all this Union Pacific 
Road. And what dust we encountered was des- 
tined to be speedily laid, beaten down, annihilated. 
The day had been fiercely hot, and toward night 
there were welcome indications of a thunder-shower. 
I watched through every stage of the slow and 
majestic preparation for what proved to be the 
grandest storm I ever witnessed. At sunset the 
clouds in the west and southwest assumed singular 
shapes, fantastic, yet threatening, — grand, yet gro- 
tesque, — some fitfully radiant, with half-imprisoned 
splendors ; some black, as though crammed with 



STORM ON THE PRAIRIE. 3I 

tempests. Low down in the horizon began the 
first glancing and quivering of the Hghtning, — 
the prelude to the great display. It was hke light 
skirmishing before a general engagement. Some 
two hours, I think it was, before that came on in 
its full sublimity and awfulness. A storm in the 
Alps, when 

" From peak to peak 
Leaps the live thunder/' 

is a mere guerilla fight to it. There were those 
on the train that night who had seen many a 
fierce storm on sea and prairie, but never a one 
like this, they said. Never, surely, was there so 
stupendous a stage for the display of Nature's fire- 
works as this vast open heaven or this immense 
level plain, lonely and bare and desolate. What 
to this was the " blasted heath " of " Macbeth," or 
that on which Lear and Edgar wandered, in " night 
and storm and darkness." One could have read 
Shakespeare " by flashes of lightning," without the 
aid of a Kean's fiery acting. And O, such light- 
ning ! Sometimes the whole western sky was one 
vast wall of flame : then again all was deep, dense 
blackness, till suddenly, in one solitary spot, the 



32 COLORADO. 



" inky cloak " of night was ripped open, showing 
its lining of fire. Sometimes, almost from the 
zenith, the lightning was let down in a zigzag 
chain, like a burning ladder, on which one could 
fancy fallen angels descending. Sometimes it fell 
in a river, a cascade of blinding light. Then, 
again, it seemed to come up from the earth, like 
an eruption, — an infernal fountain. It seemed as 
though all the red demons of the plains had 
mustered there in the West to bar our way over 
their old hunting-grounds, with fire, and tumult, 
and tempest ; yet all the while our train went boldly 
plunging into the very heart of the storm. During 
the first hour the thunder was not very heavy, — 
was scarcely heard, indeed, above the rumble of 
the train ; but at last it came, clap after clap, 
peal on peal, till many were terrified, and one poor 
English lady, used only to moderate insular thunder, 
utterly prostrated and appalled, was thrown into 
violent nervous spasms. Here was a bit of trage- 
dy, — the awful storm on the wide prairie ; the 
crash and dash, the rush and roar, without, and 
within, that poor sufferer writhing and moaning in 
half-conscious agony. There were to care for her 



TRAGEDY AND COMEDY. 33 

two anxious, well-disposed women, but the most 
calm and effective, and not the least pitiful of her 
helpers were men, — two gentlemen up to that hour 
perfect strangers to her. How beautiful this noble, 
helpful, human kindness seemed to me I cannot 
tell ! But the inevitable touch of comedy came in 
duly. A young person of color — a child's nurse, 
of the sort to whom the whole establishment is 
wont to give way — came dashing up to the front, 
with a most awe-inspiring air of professional impor- 
tance, calling out, " Jest you let ine get to her, mis- 
sus ! I knows what to do. It 's conwulsions. I 've 
seen ladies in 'em a heap o' times, and a heap wuss 
dan dis yer lady. I nussed a lady what took 'em 
reg'lar, and used to flop around awful. I couldn't 
only keep her down by gittin' on her chist, with my 
two knees. Laws, honey ! dis yer is nuthin to her 
fits. But don't let her git her hands and jaws 
squiriched! Slap 'em hard, and lay her on her back, 
and keep her thar ! " 

In spite of some rash experiments and mistakes, 
in spite of the ministrations of "Virginia's dark-eyed 
daughter," and in reward for much faithful nursing, 
the lady at last came out of her spasms and slept. 



34 



COLORADO. 



When the storm had somewhat abated, we all re- 
tired to our luxurious Pullman berths, where no 
anxieties kept us from sleeping the sleep of the 
just. A droll friend of ours used to say, "I Hke to 
go to a church run by a good old-fashioned ortho- 
dox minister, for then I can go to sleep and know 
that all will go on right." Such a comfortable 
faith one enjoys, such a quiet sense of security, 
on any railroad presided over by the masterly, 
watchful, untiring mind of Thomas A. Scott. 

In the morning we rose wonderfully refreshed, 
and emerged under a smiling sky, at Sidney, the 
breakfasting-station. I see that I here jotted down 
in my note-book, " At this altitude napkins, butter- 
knives, and Christian cooking disappear." But I 
afterward learned that this meal was hurriedly pre- 
pared, as it was supposed we should be greatly 
behind time on account of the storm, and that 
Sidney is, ordinarily, an excellent eating-place. 
Still, the bread I ate that morning sets hard on 
my memory. 

At Cheyenne I left the Union Pacific Railroad 
with real regret. I had been treated with singu- 
lar kindness by the officers of the road, for which 



CHEYENNE. 35 



I wish to make my most grateful acknowledg- 
ments. There is more than one way of doing 
even a signal kindness. In this instance, the most 
considerate, delicate, generous way was adopted. 
Cheyenne is not an attractive place, but a brave 
effort is being made to render it less unattractive. 
Some pretty houses are going up, and some few 
trees are making a good fight for life with a hard 
soil and a fierce sun. As the capital of the Ter- 
ritory that has taken the first bold practical step 
in the matter of woman's civil rights, the place 
commends itself to my heart, certainly. I should re- 
joice to find it a very Eden, a vale of Cashmere, — 
which it isn't. But it has a long day to work in, 
and with the energy, the courage and intelligence 
that concentrate at Cheyenne, miracles of improve- 
ment may be wrought till beauty shall take the 
place of dreariness, and shade of glare, and fruit- 
fulness of sterility, and the " wilderness shall blossom 
as the rose." 

It was a matter of surprise to me, the amount 
of feeling with which I parted with some of my 
fellow-travellers at Cheyenne. The same number 
of hours in a palace-car on any one of the old 



36 COLORADO. 



routes in the Eastern States would never have given 
people anything like that sense of friendly com- 
panionship. If journeying into new realms of this 
world causes us to draw nearer to our fellow-crea- 
tures, may we not hope that on going into an 
utterly new world, alien nations and peoples, and 
even rival Christian denominations, may come to- 
gether and fraternize tolerably well ? 

August 10. 

The journey from Cheyenne to Denver occupies 
about five hours. The Colorado plains, through 
which this Denver Pacific road passes, would be 
dreary enough were it not for the distant view of the 
mountains vouchsafed to us most of the way. These 
plains are for the most part arid, producing little 
but prickly -pear cactus, thistles, white poppies, and 
wormwood, and supporting nothing but antelopes, 
prairie-dogs, and their reputed fellow-lodgers, owls 
and rattlesnakes. The railroad passes directly 
through a large old dog-town, an object of particular 
interest to me. I was immensely amused by watch- 
ing the smaller canines, the mothers and children, 
scamper away stnd hide at our approach, while the 
grave old fellows sat up on the mounds over their 



PRAIRIE ABORIGINES. 37 

holes, quietly gazing at the train as it passed. About 
one large mound some half-dozen citizens were 
gathered, seeming to be in solemn council, perhaps 
discussing the Darwinian theory, perhaps holding 
an indignation meeting, and denouncing railroad 
monopolies and outrages ; for I understand that the 
right of way through their ancient borough and 
their fair hunting-ground was not honorably pur- 
chased by the D. P. R. R. Company. But a time of 
reckoning may yet come : "the dog will have his day." 
When our wise and goodly men of the Indian Com- 
mission have settled our little border difficulties, — 
have made the amende honorable to the Ogalialla 
Sioux, and restitution to the Arapahoes for all their 
robberies, and soothed the lacerated feelings of the 
Apache, they will perhaps turn their philanthropic 
efforts toward righting the wrongs of these canine 
colonists of the prairies. 

The next animated object of interest that I saw 
was an antelope, standing at a respectful distance, 
and watching with mild curiosity the passing of the 
engine, — that strange, snorting, long-tailed monster, 
that had thrown antelope speed and endurance into 
the shade. A young Nimrod, fresh from New Eng- 



38 COLORADO. 



land, deceived by the rare purity of the atmosphere, 
lamented that he had not his rifle handy, as he was 
sure he could have brought her down. But an old 
hunter smiled, and said she was far enough beyond 
rifle-range. These pretty creatures, since the great 
irruption of sporting barbarians, have grown very 
wise and wary. Yet nature did them an ill-turn 
originally, in affixing to them a mark by which they 
can be seen, and " a bead drawn " on them at a great 
distance. It renders them especially liable to at- 
tacks in the rear ; which reminds me of a little story. 
A small Colorado boy, who had been out playing, 
ran into the house in a state of great excitement, 
saying he had seen some antelopes in a gulch near 
by. At his entreaty, his mother went out to look at 
them, but nothing of the kind was found. She be- 
came incredulous, and said at last, " I don't believe 
you saw any antelopes ; it must have been your 
imagination, my child ! " To this the little moun- 
taineer indignantly responded, '* I don't care, ma, I 
guess my imagination is n't white behind." 

The settlement of most interest to me after Dog- 
town on this road was Greeley. This is a really 
wonderful place. EstabHshed on a purely agricul- 



THE TOWN OF GREELEY. 39 

tural basis, with an inexhaustible capital of intelli- 
gence, energy, economy, and industry, it has thriven 
steadily, constantly, with no wild leaps of specula- 
tion, or fever-heats of ambition and greed. With an 
orderly and virtuous population, it has had to pass 
through none of the dark and dire and tempestuous 
scenes of pioneer life, such as are found in mountain 
mining towns. Though it has had its hardships and 
discouragements, on the whole its experience has 
been exceptionably happy. The site of the town 
is a delta formed by the South Platte and Cache- 
la-Poudre Rivers, affording the amplest means for 
that beautiful system of irrigation which is rapidly 
transforming a barren region into a vast garden of 
verdure and bloom and fruitfulness. New as the 
town is, and with its share of the inevitable glare 
and unsightliness of newness, it has a peculiarly 
cheerful and spirited look. The irrigating ditches 
about Greeley and throughout the Union Colony are 
really very pretty, fringed as they are with verdure, 
carrying currents of clear, cool water on blessed 
errands to the generous, responsive soil. I saw one 
of the ditching-ploughs drawn by eight yoke of noble 
oxen. Trees are being extensively planted, and grow, 



40 COLORADO. 



like the crops, astonishingly. Were I a man, I 
would rather give my name to a town like this, and 
teach such a brave colony what I knew of farming, 
than be President of the United States. 

This young city of the plains publishes a spunky 
little weekly paper called the "Greeley Tribune." 
The title is an exact facsimile of the philosopher's 
own handwriting, and is a triumph of illegibihty cal- 
culated to witch this new world with noble penman- 
ship. The first citizen of Greeley I saw was a mule 
standing on a bank, looking down on the train and 
over the town with a patronizing and benignant 
air, — a white-faced, wise-looking animal. I think 
this must be the very mule I hear of as the great 
advertising medium of the place. Being of vagrant 
habits and a friendly disposition, he perambulates 
a good deal, overlooking the affairs of the borough, 
and so they have taken to affixing to his sides bills 
and notices of public meetings. He is a sort of 
travelHng bulletin-board. When Mr. Greeley comes 
to lecture, he has a hard day of it. 

From Greeley to Denver the country grows more 
interesting, and the mountain and river views more 
beautiful. We come upon richer pasture and grain 



THE MOUNTAINS. 4I 

lands, and finer flocks and herds. Ah, such im- 
mense stretches of grassy plain and upland ! When 
Mary goes to " call the cattle home," she goes on 
horseback, and has a long gallop of it. We could 
trace the water-courses by the vivid green of their 
banks, and we saw trees of size and in tolerable 
abundance. The air was singularly clear that after- 
noon, and the whole grand mountain picture above 
Denver unveiled. I was reminded of views of the 
Alps from Lombardy, only these mighty snow- 
capped heights seemed much nearer. Almost con- 
stantly since then, envious mists or the smoke of 
burning tracts have hid from us both the wooded 
and rocky sides, and the snowy summits of the great 
elevations. Even the foot-hills are often invisible. 
It is very warm, and I am resting and making the 
most of Denver, as I see it, in afternoon drives with 
my kind and hospitable host and hostess, and through 
its pleasant and great-hearted citizens. I can truly 
say that I never enjoyed drives as I enjoy them 
here, on the boulevards and plateaus beyond the 
town, in sight always of scenery as beautiful as it is 
stupendous. There comes to me, with a sense of the 
vastness of my surroundings, a feeling of freedom 



42 COLORADO. 



of exultation, and exaltation utterly indescribable. 
And then the air, — it throbs with the pulses of a 
new life ! The air of the morning of creation could 
not have been purer or richer. The winds of 
evening, though sweet and balmy, are strong and 
cool, with never the faintest treacherous sting in 
them. And the heat, though great according to the 
thermometer, is more endurable here, indoors at 
least, than in any city I have ever been in. It is 
never sultry ; the air is kept constantly fresh and 
vital by beneficent breezes. 

On Saturday night, for a ''lark," we all went to 
the circus. It was a California circus in incep- 
tion and development, and, like most things belong- 
ing to that great country, stupendous. I am sure I 
never saw such magnificent performances, equestrian 
and acrobatic, and I have always had a Dickensy 
weakness for the ring, — for the sawdust and the 
tinsel, and the hoops and the hurdles ; for the 
piebald horses, and the riders, so bold and dashing, 
yet so serenely grave ; and the clown, with his 
ancient jokes ; and the ring-master, with his eternal 
circular tramp, and his whip of infinite crackiness. 
In London I sought Astley's before Covent Garden. 



A CALIFORNIA CIRCUS. 43 

By far the most accomplished performers that 
night were women, in especial two blondes, who 
did the most daring and astonishing things on 
the trapeze, and on the tapis, as acrobats, and, 

heavens, as tumblers ! It was, to me, very 
dreadful, — a revolting, almost ghastly exhibition 
of woman's rights. An old-fashioned conservative 
could not have been more shocked when Elizabeth 
Blackwell went into medicine, and Antoinette 
Brown into divinity, than I was at seeing these 
women, in horrible undress, swinging, and tumbling, 
and plunging heels over head out of their sphere. 
Still, it was something to see that women could 
be so courageous, so skillful, and so strong, — could 
attain such steadiness of nerve and firmness of 
muscle, — and still retain, with all their tremendous 
physical exertions, the beauty and grace of their 
forms and all the fullness and soft curves of youth ! 

1 had unmixed delight in the wonderful riding, 
skill and daring, quiet confidence and matchless 
physical strength, of a young California girl, called 
Polly Lee. She managed, with the utmost ease 
and grace, four horses, having four younger brothers 
and sisters swarming all over her. She supports, in 
more ways than one, the whole family. 



44 COLORADO, 



But the sight of sights was the crowd of spec- 
tators, — between two and three thousand people, 
of all classes and races, — rougher, freer, noisier 
than any pleasure-seeking crowd I had ever before 
looked upon, yet good-humored and merry, and 
sufficiently orderly for jollity. When in the early 
part of the evening there came up a sudden thun- 
der-shower, and the rain beating in on the upper 
tier of benches drove hundreds down to the circle, 
just outside the ring, though there was a wild 
scene for a time, and some confusion, there was no 
strife, no accident of any kind. After the per- 
formance the fun was most uproarious over the 
drawing of the prizes, — fifty in number, mostly 
worthless. I held all the evening a delusive bit of 
paper in my hand, received at the door, and rep- 
resenting alternately, to my fond fancy, " a valuable 
watch " and " a fine calf." But my star was not 
in the ascendant in this strange sky. The watch 
went ticking off in the pocket of a modest young 
miner, who made good time out of the ring before 
a whirlwind of yells. The calf alone remained. It 
was weal or woe for me. Some ten minutes of 
mingled hope and fear, and I saw a Denverite lead 



DENVER ON THE WING. 45 

the prize off in triumph, " amid the shouting mul- 
titude." I don't beHeve that lottery was managed 
fairly ! 

Denver has been much written about, but it 
always keeps ahead of its chroniclers. To attempt 
to describe it now were almost like shooting at a 
deer running or a partridge on the wing. Improve- 
ments are constantly advancing ; grading is being 
done, and buildings are going up in all directions. 
As I sit at my writing this blazing morning, be- 
fore an open window, I hear the sound of the 
hammer, the trowel, and the saw, north, south, 
east, and west. The town, five years ago, was quite 
treeless ; now it is well planted, some houses being 
quite embowered in foliage. Larimer Street, the great 
business centre of the city, is a marvellous, inspir- 
ing sight to see any morning or evening, a mighty 
river of traffic surging through it continually. 

There has just been published in Denver a large 
Gazetteer of Colorado, a useful book for visitors and 
settlers, but hardly needed by a tourist who is fortu- 
nate enough to be under the same roof with Mr. 
Byers of the " Rocky Mountain News," an old, young 
pioneer, — "a '59 -er." What he does not know 



46 COLORADO. 



about Colorado is not worth knowing ; and he is 
most patient and gracious in imparting knowledge. 
Bayard Taylor and all the famous tourists that fol- 
lowed him drank of the Byers fountain, and still it 
flows. 

The town is crowded with tourists and invalids, 
and I sometimes wonder that the overtaxed hospi- 
tality of the people here does not give out. But no ; 
these men and women are suited to their noble sur- 
roundings. Hearts expand on these grand uplands, 
and even rough natures, like the mountain rocks, are 
richly veined with gold. 

August 13. 

Early on Thursday morning of last week I left 
town, with my kind host and hostess and their 
" one fair daughter," for a modest little excursion to 
Platte Canon and the famous Red Rocks in its 
vicinity. This canon, which shows like a great 
notch in the mountains from here, and is a most 
picturesque feature in the landscape, might well be 
addressed in the words of the song, which commemo- 
rates somebody's " beloved eye," which is also a 
" star," " thou art so near and yet so far." From 
the breezy plateau above the city, on a clear day, 



HARVESTS AND STOCK GRAZING. 47 

it seems scarcely more than half a dozen miles 
away. 

The trip was one of great interest to me, and even 
more in an agricultural than a picturesque point of 
view. It was harvest time, though the grain was, for 
the most part, cut and bound in great bounteous 
sheaves ; they were gathering it into barns, or stack- 
ing it in mighty piles, — mountains of gold. The 
beautiful farms along the Platte and Plumb Creek 
have produced this year thirty and forty bushels of 
wheat to the acre, and the fairest, plumpest, sweetest 
grain I have ever seen. On the vast wild pasture 
lands above, stock was looking very finely, to my great 
surprise, as the grass looks utterly scorched up, and 
as short as though, like the hair of poor Box or Cox 
in the farce, it had been cut at " the other end." 
Yet Colorado farmers tell me that in its driest and 
shortest estate, this wild grass is wonderfully sweet 
and nutritious, and I know it must be from the con- 
dition of the flocks and herds this remarkably dry 
season. 

All nature thirsts and pants for rain, and I sup- 
pose it must come before long, after a thousand feints 
and make-believes ; but the pure dryness of the 



48 COLORADO, 



atmosphere, through which flow the constant cur- 
rents of fresh air from the mountains, is a wonderful 
and beneficent thing for me, and thousands of other 
invalids. It is a marvellous change to be delivered 
from the fear of " the night air," — that invisible heie 
noir of the East, — to feel no dampness, no chill, no 
subtle, malarious taint, to be able to be out in a gar- 
den or porch, or a city balcony or mountain rock, 
through the long, grand spectacle of the sunset, to 
watch the magnificent cloud pageantry through all 
the changes of purple and crimson and gold and 
deepening violet, to watch the first faint gleaming 
and the slow spreading of the starry encampment till 
all the bivouac fires of heaven are lit. 

But to come down from cloud-land to farm life, I 
was surprised at the ambitious aspect of some of the 
new farm-houses. Ornamental cottages were not 
infrequent, and green blinds and balconies and gar- 
den arbors made their appearance now and then. 
One of the oldest and richest farmers of the Platte 
Valley, however, still lives in a Httle octagonal stone 
house, half under ground, which seems as though 
especially built to defy Indian attacks. This farmer 
is a Norwegian. He came here eleven years ago 



WAR-CHIEF OF THE PLAINS. 49 

with nothing : he is now worth, in land and stock, 
at least seventy -five thousand dollars. All these 
farms are well irrigated from the Platte. All present 
a singularly smiling appearance in their rich garb of 
green and gold, and in contrast with the brown, bare 
uplands. Not much fruit is yet produced in Colo- 
rado, but I am told that nearly all the varieties raised 
in California can be raised here. Little attention is 
paid to horticulture, but Jiorsicitlhire is not neglected. 
I have seen many fine-blooded animals in harness 
and under the saddle. The roads are admirable for 
driving, — so hard and even that both horses and 
carriages are easily kept in good condition. But 
driving is not pleasant here, except in the early 
morning or evening, not only on account of the heat 
and dust, but because of the excess of light, the 
dazzling brilHance of the atmosphere. It behooves 
one to look out for one's eyes. Colored glasses are 
almost as much needed here as in the Alps. 

On our way we passed the little old cabin, or 
*' shebang," of Jim Beckworth, the famous moun- 
taineer, hunter, scout, guide and Indian interpreter. 
Beckworth was a mulatto, born a slave somewhere 
in the classic region about Alexandria. He may 
3 



50 COLORADO. 



have had some F. F. V. blood in his dusky veins. 
He ran away from the old plantation in his youth 
to sow his wild oats in a richer soil. He sought 
the wildest part of the wild West. He fell in with 
the Crow Indians, who, it seems, had no prejudice 
against color, for they made much of him, adopted 
him. In this case the old saying, " Every crow thinks 
her own young the blackest," did not hold true. 
He became their great war-chief, and fought along 
the Missouri, as his fathers had fought along the 
Niger. He was as savage as though he had not 
enjoyed Gospel privileges in the Old Dominion, or 
felt the chastening-rod of a Christian master. But, 
at last, satiated with military renown, he took again 
to roving ; went to California, Arizona, Mexico, — 
everywhere that siren dangers called and hardships 
allured, seeking fresh bear-fields and buffalo-pas- 
tures new. It was in his old age that he lived 
here, as grim and grisly as any old monster of 
the mountains he had ever hunted down. It was 
from here, I believe, that he went on a last visit 
to his old friends and followers, the Crows. They 
received him joyfully. They entreated him not to 
leave them. But he had other matters on hand, 



PRAIRIE FARMS AND MOUNTAIN GORGES. 51 

and insisted on going. They then made for him a 
farewell feast, and killed the fatted buffalo calf, but, 
feeling that parting was more bitter than death, 
put deadly poison in his particular dish. " They 
keep his dust in Crowland, where he died." 

This prairie farming country is a singularly silent 
land. We heard no whetting of scythes, no tink- 
ling of bells, little lowing of cattle even, or crow- 
ing and cackling of barn-yard fowls that day. 
There being so few trees along our way, we heard 
no birds ; indeed, we missed nearly all the usual 
pleasant rural sounds, though occasionally we 
heard a mule bray, a teamster swear at his oxen, 
and at noon farm-hands and railroad -men called 
to their dinner by a joyful shout of " Grub-pile ! " 
We dined with some hospitable farmers from 
Pennsylvania, and then pushed on eight or ten 
miles to another farm-house, in the neighborhood 
of the canon. After taking a brief rest, and re- 
ceiving a cordial invitation to spend the night, we 
started on our exploration. We could drive but a 
short distance up the canon, and we bravely pro- 
posed to do the grand gorge on foot for several 
miles. But our resolution melted away in the fierce 



52 COLORADO. 



sun ; briers, prickly-pears, pebbles, and sharp rocks 
were too much for our enthusiasm and shoe-leather. 
In short, we ingloriously abandoned our explora- 
tions, and made up our minds that there was 
nothmg worth seeing in the canon ahead of us. 
After sitting for an hour or two on the rocks, in 
a shady spot, alternately fishing and shying stones 
into the river, we returned to the ranch, — to rest 
and shade and a royal supper. 

Mr. Lehow, our host, is a Pennsylvania farmer 
of the most intelligent sort, and higher praise 
could not be bestowed on a husbandman. He is 
not weaned from the old Keystone State, even by 
good health and good fortune in Colorado, and, I 
fear, believes that good Pennsylvanians will go to 
Philadelphia when they die, even from Golden City 
or The Garden of the Gods. 

Mr. Lehow's pleasant little farm-house, wherein 
many a weary pilgrim has found welcome, lies in 
a green, fruitful nook with a glorious lookout up 
the dark canon, on the mountains and picturesque 
Red Rocks, and over the rolling prairie. So much 
taste is evident in the selection of this homestead, 
and in the planting of trees about it, that one is 



A FORESHADOWING OF CRIME. 53 

not surprised to find within the cottage comforts 
and even elegances, with a family circle of rare 
intelligence, — good Republicans all, and readers 
of good books. 

The sunset was magnificent, and the twilight 
long and delicious as anything in the Italian line. 
We sat on the porch till nearly ten o'clock, pre- 
paring ourselves for sweet sleep and pleasant 
dreams by talk about the Westfield disaster, the 
great New York riot, and the iniquities of the 
Tammany Ring, wild stories of frontier life, of 
Indian massacres, of murders and robberies and 
lynchings. It was so comfortable to remember 
that all these dreadful things were a great way 
off, or a great while ago, — that we and the fine 
horses and cattle we could dimly see, sauntering 
about in the starhght or lying at rest, were safe, 
utterly safe. Yet but a few miles away from that 
quiet pastoral scene, at that very hour, in a farm- 
yard, on the high road, a fearful crime was being 
committed. A German farm-hand, after killing his 
employer, shooting his head almost away, called 
out that employer's sister, the only other person 
about the ranche, and treacherously shot her down. 



54 COLORADO. 



All night long the wretched woman remained in 
the house, into which she had crept, alone, with 
a handful of buckshot in her breast, afraid to move 
or cry, lest the murderer should find she was not 
dead, and return to finish his work. In the 
morning she dragged herself to the nearest neigh- 
bor's house, a mile away, and was brought to the 
city, where she still lies slowly dying. It was not 
till the afternoon that her brother was found, in 
a grain-stack, quite dead. It is a most mysterious 
crime, as no robbery, except the theft of a horse, 
was attempted, and the murderer himself, who was 
arrested on Sunday, can assign no adequate mo- 
tive. There was, or had been, a good deal of 
domestic infelicity in that farm-house, for its size ; 
and a husband abused and dispossessed, driven out 
into the cold by wife and brother-in-law, is sup- 
posed to be at the bottom of the tragedy. 

In the morning, which was, like all its immediate 
predecessors, glorious, we set out early, forded the 
Platte, and made for the park of the Red Rocks, 
where we spent an hour or two of rare enjoyment. 
These rocks are grand, picturesque, and pecuhar 
masses of old red sandstone, and lie in an almost 



RED ROCK PARK. 55 

regular line, and in every variety of shape, at the foot 
of the mountains for nearly twenty miles, and appear 
in their greatest grandeur and profusion in the Gar- 
den of the Gods. They sometimes assume immense 
massive forms, like Cyclopean structures ; then lighter 
forms, like those of half-ruined Gothic architecture, — 
towers, and turrets, and keeps, and pinnacles, — some 
of them three, four, and five hundred feet high. 
What, to these, were old Rhine castles or the ruins 
of Kenilworth and Melrose ? 

The views from this wild park of the Red Rocks 
are indescribably beautiful. A spot more quiet and 
lovely for a summer retreat could hardly be found, 
even in this wonderful mountain-land. I predict that 
within twenty years there will be a score of elegant 
cottages here. Perhaps the princes of Tammany will 
retire from the world to this peaceful spot. But I 
will not anticipate evil for this region. Secluded as 
it is, the park will soon be easily accessible from 
Denver, as the new narrow-gauge Denver and Rio 
Grande Railroad will pass within sight. 

A short distance down, on our homeward way, we 
passed a low, marshy hollow, containing a little water, 
in an almost black pond, which reminded me of the 



56 COLORADO. 



pool in which Eugene Aram told of hiding the mur- 
dered man, "in a dream." Mr. Byers, who knows 
this country as Sir Walter Scott knew the Highlands, 
and can point out the scene of every dark legend of 
the early days, told me that only a year or two ago a 
young sportsman, while duck-shooting here, was shot 
and scalped by a roving Cheyenne, or Arapahoe, a 
savage knight-errant, who knew not Vincent Colyer 
and had not " come in." 

A few miles farther on, as we were crossing a bridge 
over the Platte, I was told that some two }^ears ago 
a lady, who was riding over it alone one morning 
early, chanced to look over the railing, and saw a man 
hanging by the neck, the dead and ghastly face up- 
turned. It was the body of a notorious horse-thief, 
who had been caught by his neighbors and summa- 
rily dealt with. We shuddered, and thanked God 
that such days of violence were over ; and yet, a 
little way farther on, in the farm-yard we passed un- 
consciously, there lay a dead face blackening in the 
sun, — the face of the murdered young farmer, dis- 
covered under the sheaves, and waiting for the cor- 
oner. 

Yesterday's event and sensation was an excursion 



AN EXCURSION. 



57 



by a party of agricultural editors from the East, on 
the narrow-gauge road, from the city, over the entire 
distance the rails have been laid, — some three miles. 
I hear that the excursionists — a brave set of fellows 
— went off quite cheerfully, taking a calm leave of 
their friends, — indeed, rather hurrying matters to 
have the thing over. They were wonderfully sus- 
tained, considering that "no wines or spirituous liq- 
uors" were allowed on the train. Their agricultural 
report of the region through which they passed on 
that memorable excursion will be looked for with 
much interest 

August 29. 

Soon after my last writing, feeling in need of a 
little dissipation, I ran up to Greeley for a three days' 
visit. The morning of my journey was the hottest I 
have known since I came into the Territory, and the 
dust was something fearful. I was as gray as a 
gopher before we had made the first station. The 
great circus company was on the train, travelling 
like common mortals, and looking strangely quiet 
and subdued. The wonderful Lee Sisters, the daring 
Polly, the dashing Rosa, who had seemed such bewil- 
dering, flying visions of the night, in blue tarleton lit 



58 COLORADO. 



with starry spangles, had an air of weariness and 
dejection. Such vain and hollow and unsatisfactory 
things are fame and the applause of the multitude ! 
Even the trapeze performers seemed oppressed, per- 
haps by too much costume ; and the clown was 
pensive and sad, as though haunted by his old dead 
jokes that *' will not down." The "infant gladi- 
ators " presented anything but a classic appear- 
ance ; and the smallest performer of all, who had 
seemed such a cherub in tights, showed as a very 
ordinary child of earth in a dilapidated blue-check 
pinafore. In short, all was disillusion and dreari- 
ness. So do these splendid creatures who, Hke the 
fairies, dazzle and disport at night, essentially disap- 
pear at morn, leaving only a magic ring to prove that 
they ve " been yar." The only unchanged counte- 
nance in the party was that of the stern father of 
many acrobats and equestriennes, who trains up sons 
to " make both ends meet," like poor government 
clerks, and throw somersaults like model politicians ; 
and daughters to ride a two-horse act with equine- 
imity and intrepidity, and move in the difficult and 
exalted sphere of a hoop set with knives. To that 
Spartan father the quiet little girl at his side was but 



A PRAIRIE RIDE, 



59 



a small female centaur, the lively baby in arms but a 
nursing athlete of infinite acrobatic possibilities. In 
the worn faces of all these unchildlike children there 
was no look of relaxation and relief All seemed to 
say, " From sawdust we came, to sawdust we must 
return." 

The entire morning after my arrival in Greeley I 
spent in driving about with some kind friends, and 
seeing everything of interest. We drove up to the 
head of the great irrigating canal in the Cache-la- 
Poudre River. The drive over the rolling prairie 
that breezy morning, with the green track of the 
beautiful stream, and the grand mountain ranges in 
sight, was very charming ; and not the least of my 
enjoyment came from observing the fine condition of 
the flocks and herds all along our way. The terrible 
prickly-pear cactus was so thick that I could not see 
how, without iron-clad noses, the poor creatures could 
graze amid it ; but they manage somehow to pick up 
a good living. Wonderful are the compensations 
Nature grants us, even in her most harsh and nig- 
gardly moods. This ugly, bristling, ubiquitous cac- 
tus of the plains when in flower makes the wild 
waste one vast deep blush of bloom. Then its nutri- 



6o COLORADO. 



tious fruit, much like the mandrake in taste, and 
even the pulpy inside of the plant itself, has saved 
many a lost or belated emigrant's life. They tell me, 
too, that the antelope uses a thicket of cacti as a sort 
of cJievaiiX de frise when pursued by prairie wolves. 
With cactus on every side, she and her young ones 
are safe from their soft-footed, howling besiegers. 
So the ugly, bristling patch wherein they stand 
intrenched is to the antelope family pleasanter than 
a garden of roses, — is a prickly pear-adise. 

The principal irrigating canal of Greeley is said to 
be twenty-six miles long. Branching out from this 
are countless ditches, each of which calls bloom 
and verdure, fruit and grain, from the brown, hard 
soil that has lain fallow for uncounted centuries. 
Every tiniest shout or gurgle of the swift, clear water 
is like a trump of resurrection to the dead earth. 
They have almost too much of a good thing here. 
They are intemperate in the use of water. They 
revel and riot in irrigation, and some points of the 
town, where the element seems to " wander at its 
own sweet will," bid fair to produce an unparalleled 
crop of mosquitoes. ^ 

The growth of foliage here is something marvel- 



A TEE-TOTAL TOWN. 6l 

lous. Trees which in June last were bare as tele- 
graph-poles, now wear great crowns of leafy 
branches. It seems like the miracle of the Monk of 
Innisfallen, who planted his old staff in the sand, and 
it leaved out, budded, and blossomed on the instant. 
And yet they call Greeley "a slow place." Said one 
traveller to another on the cars the other day : 
"Don't stop in that town ; you '11 die of the dulness in 
less than five hours. There is nothing there but irri- 
gation. Your host will invite you out to see him 
irrigate his potato-patch ; your hostess will excuse 
herself to go and irrigate her pinks and dahlias. 
Every young one has a ditch of his own to manage ; 
there is not a billiard-saloon in the whole camp, nor a 
drink of whiskey to be had for love or money. The 
place is a humbug. Its morahty and Greeleyisms 
will bust it up some day." 

It is a fact that Greeley is a model temperance 
town. In every deed given for land is inserted this 
clause: "That it is expressly agreed between the 
parties hereto, that intoxicating liquors shall never 
be manufactured, sold, or given away in any place of 
public resort as a beverage on said premises ; and 
that in case any one of these shall be broken or vio- 



62 COLORADO. 



lated, this conveyance, and everything herein con- 
tained, shall be null and void." 

Bad Tammany politicians will go to Greeley when 
they die. Yet I heard a curious story the other day. 
A traveller about starting for Long's Peak, from 
Greeley, wished to procure some whiskey as an anti- 
dote for the bite of the rattlesnake. Of course it 
was not to be had there, but he was advised to pro- 
cure instead spirits of ammonia at the drug-store. 
Thinking, perhaps, that rattlesnakes at this season 
might be uncommonly thick and venomous, he had 
his quart flask filled, and he afterward said : " Really, 
if I had n't known better, I should have taken that 
ammonia for whiskey, and as good whiskey as ever 
I drank." 

The women of Greeley seem to me to have great 
spirit and cheerfulness. Yet I felt that with their new, 
strange, wild surroundings, — the illimitable vast- 
ness of earth and sky, — with new labors and hard- 
ships and deprivations and discomforts, — with the 
care of all the ditchers that cometh upon them daily, 
— they must be discontented, unhappy, rebellious ; 
and I tried to win from them the sorrowful secret. 
I gave them to understand that I was a friend to the 



COLORADO WOMEN. 6^ 

sex, ready at any time, on the shortest notice, to Hft 
up my voice against the wrongs and disabiHties of 
women ; that I deeply felt for wives and daughters 
whom tyrant man had dragged away from comfort- 
able Eastern homes, neighborly cronies, and choice 
Gospel and- shopping privileges. But the perverse 
creatures actually declared that they were never so 
happy and so healthy as they are here, right on the 
edge of the great American Desert; that they live 
in the sure hope of soon having more than the old 
comforts and luxuries around them ; that, in short, 
the smell of the " flesh-pots of Egypt " has gone clean 
out of their nostrils. 

In fact, I find Colorado women everywhere, on 
mountain or plain, in town or ranch, singularly cour- 
ageous and cheery, and I think that the cause in 
great part lies in their excellent health. The pioneer 
women of Michigan, Indiana, and Illinois had in 
their time to endure similar hardships and privations, 
with ague and fevers thrown in. The spirit shook 
with the body ; when the liver gave out, the heart 
soon failed. 

If I was astonished at the buildings, fields, and 
gardens of this year-and-a-half-old colony, I was more 



64 COLORADO. 



astonished at the sight of the colonists, as I beheld 
them one night gathered in the Town Hall. There 
were so many of them, and they formed so gay and 
smiling a crowd, that I almost looked for the trap- 
doors, up which it seemed they must have come 
like the fairy folk in a Christmas spectacle ; yet they 
looked like anything but fairies, — good, solid, ear- 
nest men and women, and stalwart lads and bloom- 
ing girls. The faces of the men showed that they 
took the great New York journals, and were alive 
to all the issues of the day ; and the fashions of 
the ladies showed that " Harper's Bazar " had found 
its way to their new homes. 

Greeley is supposed to be essentially a " Tribune " 
community, or, for short, a Tribunity ; but, though 
doubtless honoring their illustrious godfather, that 
their days may be long in the land they have irrigat- 
ed, these colonists are people of independent thought 
and action, having their own ideas on morals, religion, 
and politics, and even on questions of amnesty, suf- 
frage, and farming ; very few of the colonists are 
agriculturists " to the manner born " ; most are pro- 
fessional men. One whom I had seen last in college, 
I found moulding adobe brick with his own hands. 



COLONIES. 65 



I don't believe that he turned out a poorer adobe 
article for knowing Latin and Greek. His fair wife, 
from a four-months-old garden, had produced fifty 
varieties of pink, besides hosts of other flowers. She 
says Nature, in this regenerated and baptized soil, 
seems resolved to make up for lost time by producing 
flowers in matchless profusion and brilliance of color- 
ing. But it seems to me that she sends them out in 
such haste, that she forgets to scent them. They 
rather lack fragrance. 

I have said a good deal about Greeley, not because 
I am particularly interested in it, but because I be- 
lieve in the colony system out here, and this is the 
only one I have yet visited. I am. told that the Chi- 
cago Colorado Colony at Longmont has a situation 
of unrivalled beauty, is in the best of hands, and 
" flourishes like a green-bay tree," or a young cotton- 
wood. The St. Louis Colony, whose head-quarters 
are at Evans, a few miles this side of Greeley, is also 
full of promise, agriculturally and morally. It is 
young, but after the success of Greeley and Long- 
mont it has no doubtful experiment to try. I am 
sorry it has not followed a good example in adopting 
a temperance constitution. 

E 



66 COLORADO. 



If you question Colorado settlers anywhere 
about those pests of the plains, alkali and rattle- 
snakes, they will answer like Michigan people about 
fever and ague, and Mississippi River people about 
mosquitoes, '* None here, but a little farther on 
look out." 

I always inquire about the rattlesnake, for the 
subject, like the reptile, has for me a fearful fas- 
cination. I came out to this Territory with almost 
a foreknowledge that I should encounter one on 
his native heath. I never see a prairie-dog, sit- 
ting at the door of his little house, without think- 
ing of the horrible parlor-boarder below. 

I started on our excursion to Platte Caiion the 
other day with a presentiment which amounted to 
a moral certainty that I should see a rattlesnake. 
I believe in presentiments, 

" Believing that they are 
In mercy sent, to warn, restrain, prepare." 

This hung about me all day. I knew it must 
come, — a sight, at least of the deadly creature. 
At last, while following a narrow trail up the 
canon, by a mysterious sort of mental illumination 



NARROW GAUGE. 67 



I saw, just around a point, a large flat rock, and 
on that rock, coiled and ready to strike, the snake ! 
Yet I did not turn back ; I only went forward 
more slowly and cautiously, all sense resolved 
into sight and hearing. I rounded the point, and 
there, just as I had foreseen it, I found the flat 
rock, but not the snake. 

September 4. 
I should have chronicled some time ago an ex- 
cursion on the Denver and Rio Grande Narrow- 
gauge Railway. We went out about fifteen miles, — 
as far as the rails were then laid. It was a charm- 
ing day. We had a pleasant company of citizens 
and tourists, and all went " merry as a marriage- 
bell," in the old days, when marriages were of 
some account. On this railway you are struck 
at once with the reduced proportions of every- 
thing, — from the locomotive, which seems like a 
small variety of "the iron-horse," a fiery little 
Mustang, to the windows and lamps in the cars. 
The cars themselves are bright, pretty, diminutive 
affairs, cosey and comfortable. It seems like playing 
at railroading, especially as there is marvellously 
little noise or motion. Never have I known a train 



68 COLORADO. 



glide along so smoothly and quietly. The little 
engine " buckled right down to her work," like 
Chiquita, and made no ado about it for several 
miles, when, I grieve to say, she suddenly balked 
and had to be " switched." We took another horse, 
and went on merrily to the end of the road. Here 
we all alighted, and watched the men laying rails 
and driving spikes. The remorseless officers of the 
road insisted on my paying my way by driving a 
spike. It was a cruel tax on my "muscular Chris- 
tianity." The newspaper report said that I "drove 
that spike home triumphantly." But I really thought 
it " would n't go home till morning." 

This narrow-gauge road, when finished to El Paso, 
will be a wonderful route, for pleasure as well as 
commerce, as it will be almost unrivalled for vari- 
ety and grandeur of scenery. The mountain views, 
the pictures of river and park and plain, between 
Denver and Colorado City, are especially magnifi- 
cent. 

On the 24th ultimo I started for a four days' tour 
among the mountains, with some kind and hos- 
pitable friends. We went first, by rail, some fif- 
teen miles to Golden City, — " Golden," for short, 



GOLDEN CITY. 69 



— which I found very picturesquely situated, backed 
by mountains, and barricaded, except at a "grand 
natural gateway, by high rocks, some like palisades, 
some of a peculiar castellated form. Though Gol- 
den is a mining town, its mines are not of gold 
or silver or copper, but of coal. These lie in the 
immediate vicinity of the town, and are said to be 
of excellent quality. Golden is also a manufactur- 
ing town. It has fine water-power, running flour- 
mills, a paper-mill, a tannery, foundry, pottery, and 
several brick-yards. At present, the town has, not- 
withstanding its grand and picturesque surroundings, 
a bare and desolate aspect, owing to the lack of 
foliage. They have but lately had water enough to 
make the growth of even the Cottonwood possible. 
Now that they have built aqueducts, and dug ditches, 
and made a requisition on Clear Creek to supply their 
deficiencies, there is a fair prospect of gardens and 
boulevards that will utterly transform this brown 
and arid spot, and make it worthy its enticing name. 
Clear Creek is a misnomer. Its once translucent 
current has of late years been roiled and spoiled by 
gulch-mining and crushing-mills in the mountains. 
There is a wild Golden legend that tells how that 



70 COLORADO. 



venerated friend of Colorado, Hon. Horace Greeley, 
once came near losing his valuable life in Clear Creek. 
A vicious mule flung him off, right into the muddy 
torrent. He recovered himself, and calmly waded 
ashore ; but he lost his hat. That also was finally 
recovered ; but, alas ! it was white no more. 

The first college of the Territory, Jarvis Hall, a 
fine, picturesque edifice, with a grand, airy situation 
(it was blown down one night), is at Golden. It is 
under the especial patronage of Bishop Randall, and 
is an excellent institution. 

Here is the present terminus of the Colorado Cen- 
tral Railroad, and from this point they are now work- 
ing on the new narrow gauge up Clear Creek Canon, 
to Black Hawk and Central. This road is to be fin- 
ished next summer, and will be an incalculable benefit 

ft' 

to both the mining and agricultural interests of the 
Territory. Captain Fred. Grant, son of the Presi- 
dent, is doing engineer duty on this road, and is just 
now stationed at Golden, where he is very popular ; 
winning, in fact, "golden opinions from all sorts of. 
people." 

Doubtless this is going to be a great place in the 
course of time, busy and noisy ; but at present it is a 



GOLDEN TO CENTRAL. 71 

nice, quiet retreat for invalids. It boasts a fine hotel, 
well kept. By the way, the landlady, Mrs. Abbott, 
was once a passenger in a stage-coach which was 
attacked on the plains by a band of chivalrous Chey- 
ennes. She escaped, with several arrows sticking in 
her arms and shoulders. These romantic mementos, 
these primitive relics, should doubtless have prompted 
her and her friends to deal gently with the erring red 
man, but I don't think they did. 

The head of our party, Mr. E. M. Ashley, of the 
Surveyor-General's office, had preceded us with his 
carriage, which we took here, and travelled the rest 
of our way with the utmost independence and com- 
fort. 

A Httle way out of Golden, where the road led up 
the bare, bleak, immense foot-hills, a bright vision 
flashed by us. It was a beautiful young lady on 
horseback, elegantly dressed and mounted, and riding 
superbly. In that wild and lonely spot, the effect was 
absolutely startling. The road from Golden to Central 
formerly led up Clear Creek Canon, a grand route ; 
but floods rendering that impassable, the present 
mountain road was constructed, which, though less 
picturesque, is far more safe and easy. Still it has 



72 COLORADO. 



its grand points. From the summit of Guy's Hill you 
have enchanting views onward to the showy range, 
and back over the plains ; and the descent, a marvel- 
lous winding way, is a magnificent piece of engineer- 
ing. Indeed, our whole drive till we struck Clear 
Creek, in the neighborhood of Black Hawk, was a 
succession of vast and beautiful pictures. The moun- 
tain roads have astonished me by their excellence. 
The ascents and descents are admirably managed 
everywhere. I was agreeably surprised by the beauty 
and profusion of flowers and foliage on our way, 
though in too many places the mountain-sides had 
been ruthlessly denuded of all large timber, and there 
were here and there dark, desolate tracts, where fire 
had done its terrible work. We saw, as we ascended, 
few signs of animal life. All was stillness and quiet ; 
not a mountain-sheep or young Hon cheered our 
sight, not a wildcat or a bear enlivened the soli- 
tude. Now and then flocks of crows flung swift, 
black shadows on our way, and along the roadside, 
from rock to rock, " leaped the live lightning " of the 
ground-squirrel, and the shy gray gopher darted in 
and out of its hole in the bank. 

By and by the holes in the hillside grew larger, and 



GULCH-MINING. 73 



I was told they belonged to human gophers, — were 
the marks of prospecting or the mouths of tunnels, — 
and I knew we were nearing the great mining region. 

At the point where the road enters Clear Creek 
Canon all beauty ends, for gulch-mining begins. It 
were, I fear, impossible to give one who has seen 
nothing of the kind an idea of the fearful transfor- 
mation which this process works in a clear, beautiful 
mountain stream ; of the violence and cruelty and 
remorselessness of its course ; how it heads it off, 
and backs it up, and commits highway robbery upon 
it, — " Your gold or your life ! " — how it twists it and 
tortures it, and dams it (no profanity intended), and 
ruffles and roils it by panning and sluicing and shaft- 
sinking, till its own pure mother-fountain up among 
the eternal snows would n't know it ! 

The sluices which abound in this gulch are narrow 
wooden channels with riffles in the bottom, up against 
which lurks the detective quicksilver, to arrest and 
hold the runaway particles of gold in the swift water. 
About once a week the water is turned off, and the 
gold collected. Men are kept at work carting gravel, 
or wheeling it in barrows, for these sluices. In some 
places they stood knee-deep in water, dipping up the 



74 COLORADO. 



precious mud. A more slavish business could not 
well be imagined. All the way up this deep gorge, 
on each mountain-side, are pits and tunnels of gold- 
seekers, most of them abandoned, and every few rods 
you come upon an idle shaft or crushing-mill, going 
to ruin. Many of these are but proofs of individual 
failure, lack of means, courage, or capacity, not of 
the absence of ore at those points. More are the 
monuments of stock-jobbing and all sorts of swin- 
dling enterprises. Many idle crushing-niills belong 
to companies owning rich mines, but at present par- 
alyzed by the " freezing " operation ; some few mem- 
bers, or one member owning a controlling amount of 
stock, having decided to stop work under pretence 
that the lead has given out, or does not pay. Of 
course, when the stock becomes satisfactorily depre- 
ciated, these clever managers buy it all up, and after 
a decent interval recommence work. They can 
afford to wait, the gold will not run away. Trans- 
actions of this kind, not taking into account " wild- 
cat" speculations, have done immense injury to the 
reputation and the interests of Colorado. But there 
is gold here, plenty of it, in spite of all these failures 
and disasters and monstrous swindles and mountain- 



A SULPHUROUS LOCALITY. 75 

ous lies, — gold, virgin pure, and waiting only for 
honest enterprise and manly energy and constancy. 
She waits for miners, not gamblers. 

Though several large stamp-mills are at work in 
Black Hawk, I believe the smelting process is thought 
to be the best, as saving the largest percentage of 
gold. Hill's smelting works are the most extensive. 
In a large yard the ore is first subjected to a desul- 
phurizing process. Wood is piled up as for charcoal 
burning, the ore laid on it, and covered with earth ; 
then the wood is fired, and the precious mass above 
compelled to render up its unpleasant ^host. The 
smoke of its torment ascendeth up, and chokes the 
traveller on the high road. There is something fear- 
fully suggestive in that dark hollow, with its never- 
quenched fires, and those columns of yellow, suffo- 
cating smoke ; and I did not doubt the story I was 
told of a drunken man, who, having wandered in here 
and fallen asleep, awoke in the sulphurous atmos- 
phere to gasp out, " In at last ! " 

Black Hawk is built on the little space of Clear 
Creek valley that mining could spare, and on the 
sides of two gulches, — Gregory and Chase, — all torn 
and tunnelled and riddled, almost tumbled into chaos 



76 COLORADO. 



by miners and panners and crushers and smelters ; 
yet still the place had for me, as had Central, a pro- 
found, almost a tragic interest, — an impressiveness 
far beyond beauty of scenery or pomp of architecture. 
Here heroes have grappled with the hardest and 
dreariest conditions of life ; have wrestled with nature 
for the possession of the secret so cunningly hidden 
for uncounted centuries ; splendid minds have bur- 
rowed in these tunnels ; great, loving, homesick 
hearts have toiled for love's and home's sake, down in 
these dark shafts, — have toiled till they broke. Rich 
as is all this wonderful region in silver and gold, it is 
yet richer in the heroic and pathetic elements of 
human life ; in the strength and tenderness, cour- 
age and self-sacrifice, whose history can never be 
written. These are the best treasures of this rude 
mountain land ; no human assayer can value them, 
no scales are fine enough to weigh them : impon- 
derable, yet imperishable are they. 

Narrow and dingy as is this mining town, its 
people are making a brave effort to give it a look 
of comfort, in pleasant private dwellings, neat 
churches and fine school-buildings, perched up 
against the mountain-side, where it would seem no 



A MINING TOWN. 77 



building larger than a miner's hut could find lodge- 
ment. Scarcely a tree or shrub is to be seen, or 
even a flower, except it be in some parlor window ; 
but, as we drove up into Central, we came upon 
a very pretty conservatory, attached to a neat cot- 
tage. It was something strangely cheering, yet 
touching, in the universal dreariness. It was like 
a stray leaf out of " Paradise Lost." 

As we drove up the principal street of Central, 
which seemed to me narrower and steeper than 
almost any street in Edinburgh, Old Town, Mr. 
Ashley pointed out to me the sites of the famous 
Gregory and Bobtail lodes. The latter was named 
in memory of a certain unfortunate ox used by 
the original miner in drawing surface earth, in 
which he had discovered gold, down to the creek 
for washing. Would it have comforted the poor 
animal in summer-time to know that his abbreviated 
tail would be thus prolonged in history ? 

Central is a wonderfully busy and interesting place. 
Through its steep, rugged, and narrow streets pour 
swift, ceaseless currents of travel and traffic, — 
carriages, stages, loaded carts and wagons, trains 
of packed mules, miners in their rough, but pic- 



78 COLORADO. 



turesque garb ; mounted drovers, eager-eyed specu- 
lators, sleepy-eyed Mexicans, sullen Indians, curious 
squaws, sunburned, lounging tourists. But the pic- 
ture were somewhat somber, but for the pleasant 
lights given it by groups of merry children and 
bright-faced, handsomely dressed ladies. It is evi- 
dent that there are happy homes in Central, and 
churches and school-houses, and that people think 
of something beside mines, though the town is 
built on Pactolean gulches, seven times washed ; 
though the hills above it look like the walls of 
gigantic fortresses, thickly pierced as they are with 
tunnels, like monstrous portholes ; though hundreds 
of men in it lie down to prospect in dreams, and 
rise up to pan or dig ; though for many the gold 
fever dries up the very juices of youth, tinges all 
life with a fearful moral jaundice. People here, 
they say, mine in their cellars and wells and back 
yards, and a careful housekeeper examines her tea- 
kettle for gold deposits once a week. Gold is "i' 
the air " in dusty weather ; and if you live long 
enough here, you may "eat your peck" of gold, 
instead of dirt of the common sort. 

Colonel Frank Hall, the secretary of the Territory, 



SPECIMENS. 79 



to whom I fortunately had letters, did the honors 
of the town for us, — took us to the Miners and 
Mechanics' Institute, where we saw rare and beau- 
tiful mineral specimens ; to shops, where elegant 
jewelry and silver-ware of native ore and home 
manufacture are sold ; to the banks, where we 
saw both silver and gold, in bewildering quantities 
and in all forms, — nuggets and bars and dust, 
and in the ponderous shape in which it comes 
from the crucible. All this kindness, and much 
beside, was done with a charm of finished courtesy 
which, though it did not "gild refined gold," made 
us realize that there was something in Central 
better than gold. 

We left Central about midday, and reached the 
new mining town of Caribou before sunset, — 
driving leisurely up and down, mostly up, excellent 
roads, and feasting our eyes all the way on beauty 
and sublimity. After rounding mountain point after 
mountain point, and passing several thriving mining 
settlements, we came, almost unaware, upon Caribou. 
This wild young city is the utter opposite to Cen- 
tral. Though nine thousand feet above the level 
of the sea, it is in a broad, deep, bowl-like valley, 



8o COLORADO. 



green and beautiful. Young as it is, — scarcely a 
year old, — there are evidences here of prevailing 
ideas of comfort and taste. It is compact, neat, 
and homelike. The stately evergreens with which 
this region abounds have not all been ruthlessly sac- 
rificed. Beside almost every miner's cabin stands 
a tall pine, like a sentinel ; and all the way up the 
valley, on the ground not built over, are lovely 
clumps of those steadfast comforters of a wintry 
climate and a "weary land." The whole place 
looked to me marvellously cheerful, as, embowered 
in unchanging green, it smiled back a brave an- 
swer to the threatening glare of the eternal snows, 
a little way above. 

Still, to me, personally, there was a dreary sense 
of wildness and strangeness here. I knew not one 
of those brave miners, of those heroic women, who 
had set up their tabernacles here in the wilderness, 
just under the clouds and the snow. I could not 
think that a soul in all that busy community would 
have any interest in me. But when we stopped at 
the pleasant Planters' House, and the landlady, a 
bright, cheery, cordial-looking woman, came out to 
meet us, and said, "I am glad to see you," and 



THE VANGUARD. 8^ 



spoke of having long ago read things which I sup- 
posed were long ago forgotten by all the world, and 
which I had tried to forget, I was strangely touched 
and cheered. 

That evening we sat down to supper with a good- 
ly company of " honest miners," — men in rough 
clothes and heavy boots, with hard hands and 
with faces well bronzed, but strong, earnest, intelli- 
gent. It was to me a communion with the bravest 
humanity of the age, — the vanguard of civilization 
and honorable enterprise. I believe that Caribou 
is remarkable, even in this wonderful country and 
time, for the orderly, moral, and intelligent character 
of its people. Born after the evil reign of excite- 
ment and reckless speculation was past, mining life 
here is sober and laborious and law-abiding ; we, 
at least, saw no gambling, no drunkenness, no rude- 
ness, no idleness. A New England village, resting 
under the beneficent shadows of the school-house, 
an Orthodox church, and the county jail could not 
present a more quiet and decorous aspect. At 
night we fell asleep amid utter stillness and peace, 
and should have slept on till morning, but for the 
welcome disturbance of sweet music, — a really de- 

4* F 



82 COLORADO. 



lightful serenade. We were almost as much charmed 
and bewildered by those exquisite strains of the 
violin and guitar, which seemed to us to come out 
of the moonlight and the soft night-winds, as was 
Prince Ferdinand by Ariel's music, in the wild air 
of the enchanted island. And yet it was in per- 
fect harmony with the scene. It seemed like the 
shine of mountain-streams, the solemn shadows of 
pines, the glimmer of floating mists, and the purity 
of snows " sparkhng to the moon," all translated 
into sound. In the morning, escorted by a gallant 
young miner, who won all our hearts by perfect 
courtesy, we set out for a toilsome climb up the 
mountain, to visit the great Caribou Mine. The 
ore of this now famous lode is exceedingly rich 
and practically inexhaustible. It was proposed that 
I should descend into this mine by the shaft, which 
is now sunk more than 200 feet, but my enthusiasm 
was soon damped by observing the moist and muddy 
condition of the ore as it came up. So I went 
farther up the mountain, to a moderately deep and 
dry mine, which I bravely descended in a bucket, 
and with my own hand chipped off a bit of silver 
ore, which I expect my posterity will piously pre- 



A MOUNTAIN STORY-TELLER. 83 

serve. It is all of that sort of thing they are 
likely to receive from me. 

We then ascended the highest point in that im- 
mediate region, which was thereupon named after the 
one of the party least deserving of an honor, which 
should, I think, be conferred only on an actual settler. 
Nevertheless, I hereby warn all miners against pros- 
pecting or otherwise trespassing on my knob. 

On this last ascent we were piloted by Ulysses 
Pugh, an old pioneer, bear and elk hunter, and 
miner of course, and he said we must see Samuel 
Conger, the hero of Conger Mountain, one of the 
discoverers of the Caribou lode, practical miner, 
and ex-Indian fighter. So we went to the shaft 
in which he is now working, and Samuel was evoked, 
and came up, like Samuel of old, — only by a rope, 
hand over hand. Then we all sat down on the 
timbers by the mine, and the boys quit the wind- 
lass and stood by, and — but how can I describe 
the scene ? The sunny slope of the mountain, all 
grassy and flowery, the murmuring pines and whis- 
pering aspens about us, the lovely valley below, 
the grand heights above, the deep canon of the 
North Boulder at our right, gUstening snows to our 



84 COLORADO. 



left, and underneath us silver enough to furnish 
tea-sets for every family in New England, and pap- 
bowls for all the babies. And the day, — just warm 
enough, just cool enough, balmy, beautiful, benig- 
nant, perfect, — one of God's own days. So, to sit 
there idling on that aromatic log, and listen to 
hunting and mining adventures and Indian stories 
which were the real thing, and no make-believes, 
from Samuel and Ulysses, ah ! that was " richness." 
We parted from these two at last as from old 
friends, and they went back into their mines, from 
which may they come up some day rich as Eastern 
nabobs, and twice as jolly ! 

Our twenty miles' drive to Boulder City, over 
grand heights, through lovely little parks, and wild 
pine forests, and by the newly opened route down 
the North Boulder Canon, then thrilled me with 
wonder and delight, and now fills me with despair. 
I know it is utterly indescribable. I have seen 
nothing in America that has so impressed and 
enchanted me. All the way, height and depth, 
and the immensity of mountain and gorge, — sheer 
granite walls, and massive, castle-like rocks, — are 
softened and shaded and glorified by beauty incom- 



INDIAN FIGHTERS. 85 

parable ; by swift, bright, gurgling waters and silver 
cascades, and by luxuriant foliage of every imagin- 
able shade of green, touched here and there by 
scarlet and gold and tints of ruddy brown, while 
every shadowy place is illuminated with flowers. 

Boulder is a remarkably pretty town, exquisitely 
situated, just under the foot-hills, looking out on 
the prairie. It is well watered, and is in the midst 
of an agricultural region of great capabilities. The 
Buttes — sharp, bare, rocky elevations, a mile or so 
to the left of the town — make a striking and pic- 
turesque feature of the town landscape. On the 
sharpest of these, I was told, the Arapahoes once 
" corralled " a band of Utes, and kept them there 
several days. When the besiegers undertook to 
storm the heights, which their arrows would not 
reach, the Utes rolled down rocks, and so kept 
them at bay till relief came. 

By the way, I met at Boulder, and freely con- 
versed with, several old Indian fighters, — men to 
whose hardy valor and more than Roman firmness 
hundreds of the citizens of Colorado to-day owe 
their safety and the safety of their property. These 
frankly acknowledge that they were in the terrible 



S6 COLORADO. 



battle known to us as the "Sand Creek Massacre"; 
and after hearing their several simple, straightforward 
statements, agreeing in every essential point, I should, 
had I been doubtful before, have been convinced 
that there were two sides to that dark and dread- 
ful story. 

I fully believe that these men felt driven by an 
awful, imperative necessity, when, after having been 
almost starved in their mountain camps by Indian 
depredations, and the cutting off of supplies, after 
coming upon the bodies of whole families of their 
friends and neighbors literally chopped to pieces, 
after having bodies of murdered women and chil- 
dren shown in the market-places of their towns, 
with wounds more eloquent than those of Caesar, 
after despairing of efficient government aid, they 
undertook that long winter march, surprised that 
treacherous Indian camp, and made short, sharp 
work in dealing with its inmates. If the slaughter 
was indiscriminate, still I doubt not they were ac- 
tuated by as stern a sense of duty as ever impelled 
to deeds of vengeance and extermination our pious 
Puritan sires, whose valiant deeds we glorify every 
Forefathers' day. 



THE SAND CREEK MASSACRE. 87 

Still, I will add that these Sand Creek men, so 
frank, so manly, and withal so gentle now, were guilty 
of some excesses on that occasion. They fired alike 
on the squaws, who stood and fought, and the braves, 
who ran away ; and they pillaged as well as slaugh- 
tered : for it has not been denied that they took 
from the wigwams of these "friendly Indians," 
peacefully camped "under the protection of Fort 
Lyon," stores of coffee and sugar, goods and bills 
of lading just captured with trouble and peril from 
trains on the Platte, and took also greenbacks and 
boxes of boots and shoes, and clothing of all sorts, 
only a little the worse for wear and blood, and pre- 
cious relics, scalps of white women and children not 
yet dry. One soldier confessed that he brought 
away a delicate pair of shoes, a woman's shoes, 
which looked, he said, as though they had been 
filled with blood. Another soldier has ever since 
preserved as a memento, but has now given to me, 
a gayly painted shield, which he took from a slain 
brave, and which should have been tenderly buried 
with him, for it was doubtless a precious possession 
to the young man, being tufted with many eagle 
feathers, and especially decorated with a large scalp of 



SB COLORADO. 



fine, soft, brown hair, evidently that of a young 
white girl. But really now, my dear friend, if those 
gory shoes had belonged to your mother or mine, 
and if that beautiful hair had been tqrn from the 
head of your dear daughter or mine, and we had not 
been prejudiced in favor of the Indians, we should, 
perhaps, have thought that measures of retaliation 
and protection, somewhat severe, were about that 
time justifiable. In our human weakness, we might 
have said, The swifter, the sterner, the more ter- 
rible and thorough the punishment for such deeds 
the better. We might at this day be less hard in 
our judgment on the desperate men pointed out as 
" the savage leaders " in that massacre, and less in- 
clined to pen savage " leaders " against the poor 
harassed settlers of Texas and Arizona. All through 
our beautiful drive back to Denver, over those soft 
rising swells of the prairie which merge into the 
billowy foot-hills, out of which tower the mighty 
granite waves of the great range, — through all 
those smiling, peaceful scenes, I carried that bar- 
baric shield, a hideous memento of a time of terror 
and bloodshed only a little way back in the past. 
Every now and then those soft, girlish locks were 



BOULDER TALK. 89 



blown against my hand, and always the touch sent 
to my heart a thrill of wondering pity. Poor child ! 
" Who was her father ? Who was her mother ? " 

That night the strange trophy was in my chamber, 
and I could not sleep. I seemed to be alternately 
haunted by the murdered girl, who was the original 
owner of the scalp, and by the bereaved brave to 
whom it had belonged by right of conquest. 

Captain Aikens of Boulder, a hardy, handsome old 
pioneer, told me some interesting Indian stories, 
which I. regret that I have not room for here. One 
of his peculiar expressions amused me. Describing 
the astonishment of an Arapahoe chief who came 
to warn him away from his mine, and whom he 
in turn threatened and defied, he said, " Why, you 
could have lariated his eyes ! " 

Another miner, while gazing on a friend whom he 
found after an Indian raid, lying by his cabin dead, 
scalped, and stuck as full of arrows as a St. Sebas- 
tian, said, mournfully, " Poor fellow ! he has gone 
over the range." 

Another, on seeing a bald-headed stranger ap- 
proaching the camp, exclaimed, " Hello, boys ! here 
comes a man with his head above timber line." 



90 COLORADO. 



Idaho Springs, Col., September 9, 1871. 

I left Denver on the morning of the 7th by stage 
for this celebrated mountain watering-place. I was 
an outside passenger, — indeed, had the place of 
honor by the side of the driver, a famous Jehu, 
known only to me as '* Hi," which is probably 
" short " for Hiram. Along the wildest and steepest 
parts of the route he drove six fiery steeds in a 
delightfully reckless style, spinning along by quite 
satisfactory precipices. Over one of these, he told 
me, his leaders once fell and dangled and "screamed," 
and he alone held up the others and saved the 
coach ! How is that for Hiram .? And we had a 
*' thunder-storm in the Rocky Mountains," which 
approached as near the real thing as nature can get 
to Bierstadt, and saw real Indians lurking under 
the aspens by the roadside. It is true the storm 
was soon over, and the savages consisted of a small 
brave of some twelve summers, two squaws, and a 
pappoose ; but such little incidents give a dash of 
adventure and romance to travel in this dull country, 
where there are no railroad disasters and no brigand- 
age. The Indians about here are mountain vagrants, 
belonging to the " friendly Ute " tribe. These are 



AN INDIAN GHOST STORY. 91 

they who rallied to the protection of our beloved 
Vice-President and his party against a threatened 
attack from the Arapahoes in the Middle Park, some 
three years ago, and who afterward gave their dis- 
tinguished proteges rather more of their society than 
was quite agreeable ; there being at the best more 
of the Utele than the ditlce about it. 

By the way, a pleasant fellow-outsider entertained 
me that morning with some accounts of Indian fights 
and scares, and one quite singular Indian ghost-story. 
An officer of the commissary, he said, related that 
once, while on a business expedition to one of these 
mountain tribes, he was sitting at night in a wigwam 
with several chiefs, smoking and conversing amica- 
bly, when suddenly the Indians sprung up with looks 
of terror and ran out. He followed and inquired the 
meaning of the stampede, and was told that the 
ghost of a lately deceased brave had appeared in 
their midst. He looked back into the wigwam and 
saw only the favorite dog of the departed chief, 
which was behaving very strangely, leaping up and 
fawning on the air, with every sign of canine delight 
and affection. The awe-struck Indians said, *' He 
sees his master." 



Q2 COLORADO. 



How they saw him, when the white man could 
not, I did not learn, nor how long for the dog the 
vision lingered, but it is pleasant to think that the 
poor animal's loving demonstrations could not have 
been cut short by a brutal blow or kick. I think, 
if I were the dog or the squaw of a noble savage, 
I should prefer him in such an unsubstantial shape. 

This animal seership is not a new idea. I re- 
member a beautiful old picture of the " Nativity 
of the Virgin," by Murillo, I think, in which no 
one of a large group of elderly gossips and pretty 
maidens, come to see the baby, perceives an angel 
also looking on with mild interest, but a dog evi- 
dently sees the celestial visitor, and is sniffing in 
an awe-struck manner at his cerulean robes. 

The fellow-passenger I have referred to I found 
a refined and cultivated gentleman. He came to 
Colorado several years ago, fresh from Harvard, 
and has been ever since engaged in mining or 
superintending a mine. Though all his golden 
dreams have not been realized, he loves this grand 
mountain-land too much to leave it. Another gen- 
tleman tells me that in some localities three out 
of five of the practical miners are college-bred 



IDAHO SPRINGS, 



93 



men. Two ex-professors of Yale are said to be 
mining at Caribou. 

Idaho is cosily ensconced in a most picturesque 
valley, on the south branch of ubiquitous Clear 
Creek. It is still a modest little place, but it has 
two excellent hotels, and the sulphur springs and 
soda-baths are making it a most attractive point 
for invalids. The warm swimming-baths are es- 
pecially delightful, and are said to be most efficacious 
in cases of skin disease and rheumatism. The water 
is singularly buoyant ; one would find it difficult to 
commit suicide in it, without, like Merdle, calling 
in the aid of a penknife. 

I have not been able to make any excursions, or to 
visit any of the mines in this vicinity, as the " big 
rains are in," and after such an unprecedented dry 
season, we can hardly count on fair weather very soon. 
I found here Mr. and Mrs. S. S. Cox, old Columbus 
and Washington acquaintances, genial companions 
always, but now, with their sympathies quickened 
and their pleasant wit stimulated by deep draughts 
of the new wine of Ufe from the wild vintages of 
California and Colorado, they overflow with kindly 
feeling and joyous spirits. There is also at this nice 



94 COLORADO. 



hotel — the Beebee House — a delightful family from 
my native State, who, having spent a whole sum- 
mer here, are yet unwilling to depart. Everybody 
seems friendly here. Very slight, sometimes, are 
the grounds of special sympathy and acquaintance. 
Mr. Cox says it reminds him of a friendly inn- 
keeper at Alcantara, who, on hearing he was from 
New York, said, with generous effusion, " Ah, Senor, 
I feel acquainted with you! I have a friend in 
Brazil." 

Idaho is thought a better point for consumptives 
than Georgetown ; but I think, from all I can learn, 
that such invalids should not come into the moun- 
tains at all, but stop at Greeley, Denver, Golden, 
or Boulder, or at a lovely place among the pines 
called " Wilson's," about half-way between here and 
Denver. The very quality of this upper mountain 
air, which renders it almost a certain cure for 
asthma, its extreme rarity, makes it hurtful to 
lungs badly diseased. There have been several sad 
cases this year of sudden deaths from hemorrhages. 
Invalids, intoxicated by the ethereal purity of the 
air, stimulated by scenery so new and grand, led 
on and up by the enticing mysteries of mountain 



A LAND FOR INVALIDS. 



95 



gorge and torrent and lake, and by the splendors 
of snowy heights, that mock and yet allure, ex- 
haust themselves before they are aware, and sink 
with fearful rapidity. 

I have no doubt, however, that with proper care 
and comfortable and quiet Hving, decided consump- 
tive tendencies can be overcome, and firm health 
estabUshed in Colorado. Bronchitis and sore-throat 
are usually cured, but catarrh is likely to be aggra- 
vated, on the plains and foot-hills at least, proba- 
bly by the dust and wind-storms. 

As for confirmed asthmatics, — unhappy men and 
women who, like shipwrecked mariners perishing 
of thirst, with " water, water everywhere," gasp and 
fight for their scanty breath in a world of air, — 
they who find it not difficult to realize the suffer- 
ings of men suffocated in mines, or the horrors 
of the " Black Hole " of Calcutta, — they who once 
a year at least must rehearse the death-agony, 
yet cannot die, — for them, brothers and sisters in 
affliction, I have to say that I do not beUeve there 
is out of Heaven such a place as the mountain 
land of Colorado. The higher I have gone thus 
far, the better it has seemed for me. Even the 



96 COLORADO. 



brief dampness which here follows a storm seems 
not to be hurtful, so unlike is it to the harsh, raw 
dampness of the East and North. But when the 
air is perfectly dry it is to me the most buoyant 
and delicious. It has all the ethereal properties of 
champagne. I drink it in long, deep draughts. 
The worst of it is, it goes to my head, and I do 
not sleep well. I have here a peculiar lightness 
of the brain, as well as of the spirits. This may 
be a temporary effect, due in great part to mental 
excitement. Real mountaineers are famous sleep- 
ers, I believe. 

This Idaho valley, now so bare of all verdure and 
foliage, was once grassy and thickly wooded. It has 
been wasted and despoiled of all such beauty by 
the gold-seekers, principally gulch-miners. In one 
place the golden stream had been so severely 
dealt with, — its very bed taken out from under it, 
pits dug beside it, rocks tumbled about, — that I 
exclaimed, " Surely, mining did not do all this ; it 
looks like a convulsion of nature ! " 

'* A convulsion of human nature, madam," said a 
fellow-traveller. 

Towering above Idaho, in full sight from the hotel, 



SUNSET IN A STORM. 97 

is that interesting family group of mountains called 
the Chief, the Squaw, and the Pappoose, — the only 
dignified noble savages and really friendly Indians I 
have yet seen, and the only ones not likely to move 
on. The poor Chief has lost his scalp-lock ; that is, 
his head is above timber line, being over eleven 
thousand feet high. 

It is so rainy that we cannot make the acquaint- 
ance of this aboriginal first family. Mr. Cox, with 
an adventurous friend, did make the ascent day 
before yesterday to Chicago Lakes, to seek the scene 
of Bierstadt's " Storm," and got it, — the storm. 
The grand scene kept up its reputation, hailed the 
distinguished gentlemen, gave them a thunderous 
greeting, and illuminated for them with sharp light- 
nings. Old Congressmen as they were, and accus- 
tomed to pubHc appearances, they were quite over- 
whelmed with their reception ; and when they retired 
to rest in an abandoned log-cabin, lacking the little 
luxury of a roof, and the demonstration was kept up, 
they confessed that it was possible to have too much 
of the sublime and beautiful — of the Bierstadtic 
order. During that night of grand storm " effects " 
and unusual length, our poetic Democfatic friend was 
5 



COLORADO. 



never once heard to quote appropriate passages from 
" Childe Harold," but, strangely enough, as he lay 
there cowering under his blanket, and clinging close 
to his companion, an old schoolfellow, his lips every 
now and then gave forth a well-remembered cry of 
his childhood, desolate and wondrous pitiful, " O 
Mark, I want to go home ! " 

The great painter of twenty-tnousand-dollar pic- 
tures should have been there again, to have painted 
" Sunset " on the Rocky Mountains. 

Georgetown, September 20. 
On a fair but fickle morning succeeding a night of 
storm, I drove up from Idaho with my genial friends, 
Mr. and Mrs. Cox. The valley of South Clear 
Creek is, between the Springs and Georgetown, 
peculiarly picturesque and lovely. Every now and 
then it opens out into miniature parks, green and 
flowery; and the stream itself — now sweeping 
along in the shadow of grand mountains, now flash- 
ing in the sunlight — is not only beautiful, but has 
a charm of its own, of mystery and destiny, is sug- 
gestive, with its alluring shine and silvery tattle, of 
vast treasures 'hid away in the wilds from which it 



THE DEVIL S GATE. 99 

comes. This Clear Creek, in all its course, in all its 
branches, is a marvellous, enticing stream. 

Georgetown nestles like a darling close up against 
these great mountains, that tower protectingly above 
her some two thousand feet. It lies most of the day 
in shadow. Old Summit heads off the morning light ; 
Republican anticipates the evening shades. Here 
we see neither sunrise nor sunset. I miss the latter ; 
the former is not of much account. 

At the Barton House, the fashionable hotel of the 
town, we met some friends who had previously invited 
us to a "miners' dinner," at a mountain ranch about 
two miles above the town. We followed up the 
caiion by a steep, wild, winding road, amid gather- 
ing mists and under heavy threatening clouds. On 
the way, the gentlemen left the carriage to follow out 
a rocky point, from which to Icok down on a peculiar, 
narrow passage in the creek, called the Devil's Gate. 
This I have since seen, and found really grand. A 
lady tourist visited it awhile ago, leaving her little 
daughter in the care of a friend in Georgetown. On 
her return, the child ran up to her in great excite- 
ment, exclaiming, " O mamma ! was the Devil at 



COLORADO. 



The ranch to which we had been invited belongs 
to the rich Silver Plume Mine, and is perched up 
among the pines on a grand rocky ledge, command- 
ing one of the most wild and striking, yet lovely 
views of this region. The house, neat, commodious, 
and even picturesque, is Bachelors' Hall, where no 
feminine housekeeper intrudes, where no Dinah mo- 
lests, and no Biddy maketh afraid. Two of the man- 
agers of the mine, Mr. S and Colonel G , are 

the proprietors of the establishment, though their 

friend, Judge B , has all the privileges of the 

house, — to eat, and sleep, and cook, and wash dishes. 
There our hosts, courteous and cultivated gentlemen, 
set us down to a well-appointed table, and served us 
to course after course of meats admirably cooked and 
vegetables in bewildering variety. For dessert we 
had pudding, fruits, and three kinds of pie, I have 
always had a misgiving that our monopoly of the 
kitchen department is a usurpation, and this experi- 
ment convinced me that we have carried things with 
too high a hand. After that most remarkable and 
jolly dinner — a revolutionary banquet — was over, 
Mrs. Cox and I meekly proposed to assist in the 
" clearing up," and were finally permitted to wipe the 



BACHELOR S HALL. lOI 

dishes. We did our best, perceiving that our per- 
formance was watched very critically. Such neat- 
ness, such order in kitchen and pantry, filled us with 
envious despair. Yet I would not have men display- 
ing such domestic faculties disfranchised. I would 
rather, if I could, encourage such rare virtues by 
frequent visits to the Silver Plume House. 

By the way, gentlemen visitors before accepting 
the hospitalities of our brave mountaineers, bachelors 
for the nonce, are required to subscribe to the fol- 
lowing 

RULES AND REGULATIONS. 

1. Guests, upon arrival, will divest themselves of their 
hats and coats, and proceed to make themselves useful. 

2. Meals served when they are ready. 

3. No lights allowed in the rooms after the candles have 
burned out. 

4. No gambling allowed in the house unless the landlord 
is in the game. 

5. If you wish any water, the creek is seventy yards 
south of the house, and the pail in the kitchen. 

6. No complaints of the servants will be tolerated. 

7. If your boots require shining, the blacking and brushes 
are behind the door, — shine away. 



102 COLORADO. 



8. If the cooking does not please you, the larder, stove, 
and wood are at your disposal. 

9. The only brand of spirits or wines allowed to be 
drunk in the house is the O. P. (other people's) brand. 

10. Any guest not liking these rules is at liberty to help 
himself to mustard. 

The " Silver Plume " is one of the prettiest and 
most suggestive names yet given to a mine. Some 
are very striking, like the " Terrible," and some odd 
and ludicrous, like the " Bobtail," the " Big Thunder," 
the " Spondulics," the " Poor Woman," and the 
" Spotted Jack." The legend of the latter is, that as 
a prospector reached a certain point on a mountain 
trail, his pack animal, a piebald Jack, stopped short, 
braced himself, and utterly refused to budge an- 
other step. Neither blows nor blandishments had 
any effect. Could he have spoken, as spake one of 
his kind when belabored by the Prophet Balaam, 
he might have said : " Why beatest thou thy servant } 
Beholdest thou not the angel of fortune standing 
in the trail before us, with a drawn silver sword ? 
Seest thou not the ' blossom rock ' at thy feet ^ " 

At last the miner chanced to perceive in the soil 



BRAINS FOR CONGRESS. I03 

on which he stood the sure indication of ore, and in 
his gratitude, and as an amende honoi^able for the 
beating, bestowed upon the lode then discovered the 
name of " Spotted Jack." Here may have been a 
donkey diviner, an inspired ass. Such things have 
been. 

The next day's event was a horseback excur- 
sion to Green Lake, a beautiful and unique sheet 
of water, lying high up among the mountains in 
a deep, dark privacy of rock and pine. Just be- 
yond it is a wonderful wild spot, known as the 
Battle-Ground of the Gods, where the valley is 
covered many feet deep with rocks, immense 
boulders, which have been hurled down, in some 
awful tumult of the elements, from the mountains 
on both sides. 

Green Lake is a pleasure resort, with nice build- 
ings and boats, at present in charge of three young 
miners resting from severer labors. We found them 
remarkably cultivated and courteous young gentle- 
men. They rowed us to the upper end of the 
lake, where there is a singular natural curiosity. 
Far down under the clear, green water are to be 
seen large round rocks, covered with a peculiar 



104 ' COLORADO, 



kind of moss, which gives them a remarkable re- 
semblance to the lobes of the human brain. I re- 
marked to the honorable gentleman from New York, 
that it was a pity this great natural deposit of brains 
was not more contiguous to the capital of our coun- 
try, — there might be a chance for a contract to 
supply Congress. Came the withering reply, "Yes, 
madam, and the newspaper people ; I 'm opposed to 
monopolies." 

We made very good time down the mountain, 
hurried by low, muttered threats of thunder, and 
gentle hints of lightning, with a mild suggestion 
of drizzle, and, finally, unequivocal expressions in 
the shape of big, dancing drops of rain. Just 
as we reached the sheltering porch of the hotel, 
a silvery sheet of hail shut down upon us like a 
portcullis. 

That afternoon my pleasant companions left me, 
left with Colorado not half seen, — he at the call 
of his country and the Ku-Klux committee, she at his 
call, though Snake River Pass beguiled and Gray's 
Peak allured. All that dreary night it stormed, and 
in the morning the mountains on three sides of us 
were white with snow. O strange, wild scene! 



ELECTION DAY AT THE MINES. I05 

O marvellous leap, from midsummer into De- 
cember ! \ 

But the next day was mild and bright, and elec- 
tion day. I watched the gathering of the clans, 
the passing of processions and brass bands, with 
unusual interest. These manly men, brave pioneers 
and miners, seem to make much of the privilege 
of electing their county officers, are thankful for 
small favors in the way of the franchise. I never 
looked upon an election crowd more earnest and 
orderly, or so intelligent looking. The mire of 
politics, the corruption of the polls, did not seem 
to have hurt them much. The Judge of Probate, 
elected by an unprecedented majority, is a young 
man of twenty-four. Colorado is the paradise of 
young men ; but they must be young men of tal- 
ent, energy, tact, pluck, and of a fiery yet chiv- 
alrous spirit. 

I was that night present at a sumptuous supper 
given by the Judge elect, in his elegant house, to 
the band, — all young Englishmen, and all miners 
on the great " Terrible " lode. They were accom- 
panied by the foreman of the mine, a very intelli- 
gent Cornishman, and by their superintendent, Mr. 
5* 



I06 COLORADO, 



Olds, a gentleman of remarkable talent and culti- 
vation, and the pleasantest of companions. It was, 
I confess, something of a surprise to me to find 
all these Terrible fellows so intelligent, so well 
dressed, so agreeable. Transformed from gnomes 
into very agreeable fellow-creatures, they passed with 
ease and dignity from the "shaft" to the stairway, 
and from the " drift " to the drawing-room. 

The candidate they honored did not treat them, 
had not treated any man that day to anything 
stronger than coffee and cigars. " O wise young 
Judge ! " 

A day or two later I rode up the creek t6 the 
Terrible, kindly escorted by Mr. Olds. Here I 
first entered a great tunnel, lighting my own way 
by a flickering candle. Twice'^ we had to stand 
aside, — cower close up against the wall, out of the 
way of a loaded car, — and once we were, arrested 
by miners running out of a drift, with the warn- 
ing cry of " Fire ! " followed almost immediately by 
the dull thunder of a blast. After the suffocating 
smoke had somewhat cleared away, we followed up 
the drift, and clambered over the fresh heap of 
rock torn down by the blast. That and the great 



UNDERGROUND. 107 



timbers at the entrance of the drift, and the steep 
iron ladder reaching to the level above, gave me 
my first full realization of the stupendous, titanic 
labor necessary to the mere opening of a mine ; for 
though the Terrible has turned out a great deal 
of excellent ore, its superintendent considers that 
they have only yet made "a small beginning." The 
great Burleigh Tunnel, a little way dov^rn the valley, 
has gone in nearly twelve thousand feet, and has 
not yet reached " paying ore." This great work is 
being executed by monstrous drills, driven by at- 
mospheric pressure. Of course, just before those 
mighty engines shines the great lead. 

After leaving the tunnel we visited the other 
works, and I became tolerably familiar with all the 
laborious processes of sorting, dressing, and washing 
the ore. Everything of the kind is strangely inter- 
esting to me, and the faith, the energy, the con- 
stancy, the hard, heroic industry of these men excite 
in my heart the most respectful admiration. 

In the cabin of one of the miners I saw an en- 
gaging pair of pets, — a pretty black-and-tan terrier 
and a peaceful tiger-marked cat, — who are the most 
gentle and jolly comrades, frolicking together by the 



Io8 COLORADO. 



hour, and going off together to hunt the ground- 
squirrel. Together, they follow the miner when he 
goes sporting or prospecting, trotting after him all 
day, and creeping under his blanket at night. The 
terrier is called " the dog of the mine," ready to 
be caressed by every hand ; but the cat is exclusive 
in her devotion, and it is scarcely safe for a stranger 
to touch her. She seems to take the caninity from 
her playfellow, and to have bestowed her felinity 
upon him. 

On our way down the mountain we met the Green 
Lake boys, out on a prospecting tour, probably. 
When they first came to the Territory they invested 
all they possessed in a mine, which proved a failure ; 
but not daunted or discouraged, they are as ready as 
ever to hurl all their energies and resolve at the 
stony heart of the mountain. I wish them good 
luck, yet all I see here convinces me that mining 
without capital is a phantom. Only large means 
can insure large results. It is only when the greedy 
earth is gorged with a great deal of money, that it 
will disgorge a little gold and silver. Capital bears 
as hard on labor here as elsewhere, I am told the 
law requires that the poor miner, before he can even 



MINING NEEDS MONEY. 109 

get out a patent to secure his claim, must put upon 
it ^1,000 in labor and machinery. This and his 
surveys necessitate an outlay of $ 1,200 to begin 
with. Then there is his support, and often that of 
a family, with the cost of living fearfully high. So 
it is that we find the ground in some mining regions 
honeycombed with abandoned claims. Boarded-up 
tunnels and idle windlasses are far oftener indications 
of the failure of means in the miner than of ore 
in the mine. The running of railroads into this 
region, and the consequent reduction in the cost of 
transportation, labor, and Hving, will work a great 
revolution. Colonel Thomas A. Scott is the coming 
man for Colorado. His name, if he carries out the 
grand enterprises ascribed to him, will be lettered in 
silver and gold on the granite of the Rocky Moun- 
tains. But for the present let the poor man come 
here, if come he must, with no wild dreams of sure 
and speedy success. Fortune must here be wooed, 
not only with heart and a strong hand, but a full 
purse. 

September 22. 

There is in Georgetown a certain old pioneer, 
prospector, soldier, journalist, philosopher, and friend, 



no COLORADO. 



by name Stephen Decatur, but accosted everywhere 
in the Territory, where every man must have a title 
or a sobriquet, as *' Commodore," — a man known of 
all tourists, and well beloved of miners and little 
children. To this pleasant and well-informed ac- 
quaintance I am indebted for the crowning pleasure 
of my visit to the mountains, — an excursion to the 
Divide and Snake River Pass. 

We set forth early this morning under a glorious 
assurance of sunshine and clear skies, which held out 
to the end. The drive of ten miles through a lonely 
valley, along a winding road continually ascending, 
was to me a succession of delicious surprises. The 
aspens, which grow profusely along this creek and 
for some distance up the mountain-sides, and the low 
shrubs and plants, were touched by late frosts into 
exquisite shades of gold and scarlet and crimson and 
brown, lighting up the grand gloom of the pine and 
spruce ; then the mountains, towering above us in 
majestic beauty, marred here and there though their 
stern faces were by tunnel-wounds and boom-ditch 
gashes. It makes one dizzy to look to some of the 
points at which the miners are at work. They 
have tapped the mountain at elevations one would 



DIVIDE AND SNAKE RIVER. Ill 

/ 

say only a wild bird could reach. At last gleamed 
before us, above the gloom and the green and 
the gold, the distant, defiant peaks, where eternal 
snow and silence and mystery brood over the 
secrets of nature, which as yet men can only 
guess at. 

As we drew nearer to the snow-crowned moun- 
tains, and wound up toward the pass, it was cu- 
rious to mark the gradations by which the foliage 
of the valley disappeared. The aspen, trembling 
and shrinking more and more, gave out first ; the 
sturdy pine kept on bravely for a while, but seemed 
to cower toward the earth, became cramped and 
distorted, peaked and pined, straggled in the 
march, and at last fell back. We had passed 
"timber line ;" and there remained only a few scant 
grasses and brave little flowers and small lichen- 
like plants, which kept along with us to the very 
summit of the pass. 

Fortunately, the air was soft and almost perfect- 
ly clear, so that it was pleasant for us to linger 
on the very highest point of the pass, and possi- 
ble for us to see a great distance on both the At- 
lantic and Pacific sides of that wonderful mountain 



COLORADO. 



world. Six miles to our right was Grey's Peak, 
fifteen thousand feet above the level of the sea. It 
scarcely seemed more than two miles away. We 
could easily see a party of tourists toiling up to the 
dazzling summit. When we marked through what 
heavy snows they were obliged to make their way, 
we were quite content with our 12,500 feet. There 
were a few patches of snow on the point we occu- 
pied, quite enough for the indispensable snow-balls, 
and not too much for comfort. I sat there on 
that bare, desolate peak long enough to let the 
vast, grand scene sink deeply and ineradicably into 
my memory. It was more solemnly grand to me 
than any Alpine scene I remember. The Alps, I 
think, are more wild and broken and jagged ; 
they lack the awful repose of these stupendous 
shapes ; they dazzle more with their glaciers and 
astonish with their white, sharp heights : these 
overwhelm one with- ^ their vastness, their solidity, 
their mighty, dome-like swells. They seem to be 
taking a continent to themselves ; you can scarcely 
imagine any land beyond them. It strikes me 
it is like the difference between a sea tossed by a 
sudden tempest, broken, tumultuous, and foaming, 



THE LITTLE BROWN PIONEER. II3 

and a sea subsiding after a great storm, rolling, dark 
and sullen, in mighty swells, with only the mighti- 
est capped with the white froth of its fury. 

The road leading down into the valley of the 
Snake River seems one of most enticing perilous- 
ness and beauty. It was hard for me to turn back 
without exploring it and the lovely parks and wild 
canons beyond. But the time is almost come when 
I must turn my steps from Colorado altogether. 

We ate our lunch, seated among the rocks by 
the roadside, sharing our " grub-pile " with the 
road-master and toll-gatherer, — a Colorado soldier, 
a man of much intelligence and genial feeling, 
whom it would be pleasant to meet anywhere ; 
and before we left the range there came along a 
young prospector and hunter, who told me how he 
had been " corralled " up a tree by a she-grizzly, 
which also was a pleasant and piquant incident. 

I must not forget to record still another little 
incident of this day of days. 

Just as we passed ** timber line," in our ascent, 
a little brown bird started out from a bush by the 
roadside, and flew along before us, evidently lead- 
ing the way, giving out now and then a cheery 



114 COLORADO. 



chirp of welcome and encouragement. From rock 
to rock, up all the dreary way, past steep declivi- 
ties, over banks of snow, it flitted ; pausing, when 
we paused to give our panting horses breath, and 
looking back at us, always with that patronizing 
chirp and a pretty sidelong bob of the head. Dear 
little friendly creature ! Blithe spirit of the soli- 
tude ! A palpitating joy, — vocal, yet unconscious 
love and courage and thanksgiving, — unawed by 
those awful white heights, by those dark depths, 
by the vastness and loneliness and solemn silence 
of that upper world, it bathed in the soft air and 
radiant sunshine, and so nestled in the bosom of 
Nature and of God. 

I shall leave Georgetown, and particularly the 
house in which I have been most tenderly enter- 
tained, with keen regret. The town itself, though 
charmingly situated, is not attractive to Eastern 
eyes. It sadly lacks foliage ; it is rocky and stumpy; 
and some of its streets are needlessly rough and 
steep. But the people are singularly cordial and 
agreeable. They are truly democratic in their greet- 
ing to strangers. The rich capitalist is received as 
handsomely as the honest miner come to seek his 



COMING OF THE FEEBLE AND FASHIONABLE. II5 

fortune. The elegant tourist or sportsman, even 
if he be an English lord, is treated kindly, if he 
shows a disposition to rise to the conditions of the 
new life around him, and rough off his rank. 

The new narrow-gauge railroad from Golden to 
Central is to be continued to Georgetown. This 
will not only be an immense help toward the 
development of the mines, but will make the town 
more than ever the resort of tourists and invalids. 
New hotels will be built, and rustic cottages ; and 
the suffering and the sensible, and, alas ! the fash- 
ionable and the pretentious, will set in upon it 
in crowds. Saratoga trunks, if they can get on 
the narrow-gauge, will come in. Hitherto, the 
immense charges for extra baggage have almost 
laid an embargo on them. Actresses coming to 
Colorado have been compelled, at a painful sacri- 
fice of their modesty, to " shed the light frivolity 
of dress " in a great measure. But by another 
season or two, belles in distracting French toilets 
will invade tunnels and crushing -mills, and de- 
scend into shafts, and plunge into drifts, and storm 
the Devil's Gate. 



Il6 COLORADO. 



Denver, September 27. 

A week ago I came down from the mountains, 
and somehow have not felt much Hke finishing 
my letter since. An outside stage-coach drive of 
fifty miles, beginning at 6 a. m. in a shadowed 
mountain valley and a mild November temperature, 
and ending at 2 p. M. in the unmitigated sun- 
glare of the plains, in the dust and fierce heat 
of midsummer, was not altogether an agreeable 
or healthful Httle trip ; but I lived through it, — 
just. If I were not in Colorado, I should think 
myself ill. 

Gur coach was heavily loaded with passengers 
and mineral specimens bound for the great State 
Fair at Denver, and our driver remorselessly bent 
on making the best time possible ; and yet no 
accident happened, except at the very start, when 
the renowned Hiram's whiskey-flask, lying on the 
seat behind him, became uncorked, and the pre- 
cious contents ran all abroad. Rather more than 
was quite agreeable came on to my side. Some 
vile punster in the company remarked that it was 
" a good thing to start on a journey in a fine flow 
of spirits." We laid the dust with " mountain 



THE CITY OF THE PLAINS. II7 

dew," — we made the very air drunk as we dashed 
along. Hiram's last name is the same as that 
borne by a family somewhat eminent in American 
poHtics, and of which four brothers were once in 
Congress together. I ventured to ask him if he 
also was of that family. The honest fellow drew 
himself up haughtily, touched up his leaders, and 
replied, " No : there are four brothers of us, but 
we are all stage-drivers." 

The first distant view of the plains stretching 
out beyond Table Mountain, as you descend 
the foot-hills, is surpassingly grand. To me it 
was even grander than the mountains in the back- 
ground, — so vast, so illimitable it seemed. And 
the sight was strangely touching, as more sugges- 
tive of human life and death, of enterprise, of 
struggle, of suffering. And how inspiring was 
the first view of Denver ! Young Empress of the 
Plains, to whom the old kingly mountains pay 
tribute from their hidden treasure - chests, — fair 
desert child of this wondrous golden age, with her 
stirring yet pathetic legend, strange and wild and 
tragic, — a city founded in peril, isolation, hard- 
ship, and heroism. 



Il8 COLORADO. 



^ October 4. 

On coming down from the mountains I found 
the great fair in full blast. On the second day 
there were some very exciting trotting -matches 
between Colorado Chief and Richard the Third. 
If the horses were not quite equal to Dexter and 
Goldsmith Maid, our crowd was quite as enthu- 
siastic as a Long Island crowd could be, and 
bets were lively. I observed one venerable man 
betting with a small boy, in an instructive moral 
way ; and when his horse won, he pocketed the 
little fellow's three cents "with a smile that was 
childlike and bland." There was some good run- 
ning of handsome horses ; and how restive and 
fiery they were, and how many men it took to 
hold them ! They were ridden by gayly costumed 
young jockeys, quite in the style of our pious 
ancestors. There were mule-races wild and laugh- 
able, and on the last two days " the ancient tour- 
nament," and racing by friendly Utes. In the 
tournament appeared gay young knights, gor- 
geously apparelled, of all known and unknown 
orders, who, with gleaming lances tilted gallantly, 
not at one another, but at rings suspended over 



FAIR-DAY. TOURNAMENTS AND RACES. II9 

the track before the judges' stand ; and a Scotch 
knight, a modest youth of seventeen summers, 
having borne off the most rings, was at last de- 
clared victor, and crowned with a resplendent 
wreath which he afterward, under the direction of 
the herald or marshal, placed on the fair head 
of his chosen queen of love and beauty, — all of 
which was very fine and feudal, and suggested 
Ivanhoe and Eglinton and Astley's. 

The Indians were to race for two dazzling 
prizes, — a saddle and a bridle, manufactured es- 
pecially to suit their sumptuous taste. They were 
a rather melancholy band of Utes, mounted on 
sorry ponies ; and some came on the ground ac- 
companied by their squaws and pappooses, wearing 
like them an appearance the reverse of festive. 
The Ute is of a squat figure and of a broad, 
blank countenance. It is difficult to tell the 
mounted braves from the wild belles who gallop 
through the streets with them ; for ahke they wear 
rouge and ear-rings, part their back-hair, and ride 
astride. With my advanced ideas on the woman 
question, I have been gratified at this indication 
of natural equality, — gratified to see that the no- 



I20 COLORADO. 



ble red woman so nearly resembles the stern lord 
whose burdens and blows she bears ; that her 
countenance is marked, equally with his, by that 
lofty stoicism and quick sensibility, that princely 
pride and native modesty, that keen-eyed sagacity 
and childlike trustfulness, that matchless subtlety 
and fearless honesty, that iron resolve and plastic 
gentleness, which we read of in the pleasing ro- 
mances of Cooper and the Peace Commissioners. 
The first preparation made for the race by the 
Indian competitors was the stripping off of sad- 
dles and all unnecessary ornaments from their po- 
nies, and the discarding of a large portion of their 
own classic drapery. It was an audacious undress 
parade. The ponies, thus lightened, ran astonish- 
ingly well, and the prizes were borne off by the 
victors in stoUd triumph. All the Indians, to my 
surprise, rode in solemn silence. I was afterward 
told that the usual savage yell had been prohib- 
ited by the marshal. It was one of the reserved 
rights of the civilized Caucasian crowd, and you 
would not have known theirs from the native 
article. 

In the next day's race, one of the two best 



INDIAN JOCKEY COURTESY. 121 

ponies balked, when about half round the course, 
and the singular sight was presented of the rider of 
the other horse palling up, and waiting till his rival 
should be able to go on. Here is a fact for the 
philanthropists and a lesson to the Christian jockey. 

Just before the Indians started on the first race, 
it was perceived that the iron tournament-rings 
hanging over the track had not been removed. 
They were hastily taken down, and perhaps a 
sad accident averted. Ah ! had the danger been 
overlooked, — had the poor Indian, ever the victim 
of " rings," dashed out - his brains against one of 
these, — what a sensation it would have created in 
exalted Eastern circles! what a story would have 
gone forth of the unsuspecting Ute, decoyed into 
the fair-grounds, and "butchered to make a Den- 
ver holiday ! " 

There was the usual display of lady equestrian- 
ism ; a good deal of solemn cantering around 
the track, and up and down before those awful 
judges ; and all was very proper and common- 
place, except the performances of a certain young 
lady, who rode a bare-back act on a spirited 
white horse which she sat with the utmost ease 

6 



COLORADO. 



and dignity, and managed admirably. Unlearned 
in the mysterious ways of fair committees, I 
supposed that here was, of course, the " elect 
lady," who would take the first prize by acclama- 
tion. But she did not take it, nor the second, 
nor the third. I should have liked to set those 
inscrutable judges, and that gay young man, the 
marshal, each on a bare-backed, high-mettled steed, 
and I would have compelled them to ride side- 
wise and encumbered with a long, heavy skirt. 
After galloping and caracolling about that course 
for a few times, I think their respect for such 
performances would have increased. But perhaps 
they thought bare-back riding something unfemi- 
nine and reformatory, and were of the opinion 
that the side-saddle was one of the sacred em- 
blems of a model woman's lop-sided sphere. 
But, for all that, I hold the lady displayed rare 
horsewomanship. 

I have dwelt much on the equine character of 
this great occasion, because, like most State and 
county fairs nowadays, it was little more than a 
grand horse-show, with an agricultural attachment, 
and some original and ab-original features. 



FOOD FOR THE GIANTS. I23 

Still, the buildings devoted to farm products 
and mineral specimens were always crowded, and 
were to me by far the most interesting depart- 
ments. I had seen elsewhere as grand-looking 
stock ; but nowhere on earth had I ever beheld 
such immense, such Brobdingnagian vegetables. 
Think of early potatoes, sound and sweet to the 
core, weighing six pounds apiece ! Consider a tur- 
nip weighing twenty-two pounds ! Bring your 
mind up to a cabbage of fifty pounds ! Shudder 
before an awful blood-beet of sixteen pounds, and 
make obeisance before a pumpkin actually weigh- 
ing a hundred and thirty pounds ! I really rever- 
ence that pumpkin, that mountain avalanche of 
summer sunshine. I would make a pulpit of it, or 
the platform of a woman's rights convention, or put 
it to some other sacred and dignified use. Think 
of Spanish cucumbers by the yard, and wheat, oats, 
and barley more than six feet tall. You need not 
be surprised to have a Colorado friend write to 
you ' from his ranch in this wise : " Sitting in 
the cool shade of a stalk of barley growing by 
my door." 

In examining some beautiful specimens of grains, 



124 COLORADO. 



I fell into conversation with the exhibiter and 
producer, a fine-looking ranchman named Everett, 
an intelligent, thoughtful, independent farmer from 
Ohio, where " they make 'em ; " and the story of 
his first enterprises and struggles on a Colorado 
ranch was more interesting to me than the most 
thrilling novel. 

The display of gold and silver ores was aston- 
ishing, and must have been very tempting to one 
who would make haste to be rich, knowing not 
through what weary, painful days, with what wast- 
ing fever-dreams, what sickness of hope deferred, 
the shy vein is followed to its deep, dark, secret 
lair, and by what fierce toil its precious prey is 
torn from its granite jaws. - 

After all, the finest part of the show, afford- 
ing the most interesting studies to me, was the 
crowd of people. Such an immense gathering, 
and augmenting on each of the five days of 
rural revelry, and such infinite variety. There 
were the rich and fashionable, in elegant turn- 
outs ; there were well-dressed ranchmen, with their 
families, in heavy wagons ; miners on horseback ; 
tourists, journalists, and mine superintendents look- 



A .DENVER CROWD. I25 

ing at ores ; Mexicans, with wild but sleepy dark 
faces, costumed roughly yet picturesquely in prevail- 
ing tints of brown, — very much such figures as I 
once saw at the Italian Fair of Grotta Ferrata ; Chi- 
namen, gliding about in their silent, deprecating way, 
with their mild, melancholy faces ; Indians, with 
their broad faces painted out of their natural resem- 
blance to humanity ; colored citizens, escorting their 
families with a glad sense of undisputed owner- 
ship, lifting up their heads in the yet fresh air of 
the Fifteenth Amendment ; brave, healthy-looking 
young housewives, inspecting the fruits and flowers 
and sewing-machines ; nice elderly ladies, examining 
the prize quilts and dairy products ; pretty, smiling 
girls, with their gallant rustic attendants ; and, best 
of all, rosy, chubby, happy children everywhere. 
Once, in making our way into the dining-hall, we 
got into a fearful crowd of hungry people, which 
faintly reminded me of scenes at the great Inaugu- 
ration Ball ; and I shuddered to think to what depths 
of metropolitan and Federal rudeness and barbarity 
even this virtuous and courteous people might come, 
under similar circumstances. But at all other times 
this great assembly seemed to me wonderfully pleas- 



126 COLORADO. 



ant, orderly, and kindly. It was made up, in great 
part, of strong, hardy, earnest, and intelligent-look- 
ing men, — excellent representative men of this 
noblest of the Territories. As I regarded them, I 
could but think it hard that they should be cut off 
from any of the political privileges and dignities of 
American freemen ; that, after adding so much to 
the wealth of the Republic, after having rallied so 
bravely for her defence, they should see their be- 
loved Territory barred year after year out of her 
bright company of sovereign States. 

In fact, I hear dissatisfaction expressed on all 
sides with the existing political condition ; and 
this sort of semi-vassalage of a people, strong 
enough in character, wealth, and intelligence to 
govern themselves, does seem, at the best, an 
anomaly under a republic, a form of government 
whose very name implies that it is "a thing of 
the people." It is hard that a splendid young 
province, with, as Mickey Free says of Charley 
O'Malley, " as much divilment in him as thim that 
is twice his age," is compelled to thus "tarry at 
Jericho till his beard be grown." I understand 
now why suffrage was first granted to woman 



AN INDIAN POLITICIAN. I27 

in a Territory. " A fellow feeling makes us won- 
drous kind." 

I doubt not that political critics here are harder 
in their judgments on governors, and other officers 
appointed by the President, than they would be on 
men of their own selection and election. Even the 
Indians are critical. Their favorite was that gen- 
eral favorite in Colorado, Governor Hunt. Of him 
a shrewd Ute chieftain once said, " Heap ' how ' ! — 
heap swap, heap biscuit, — good ! " When asked his 
opinion of Governor McCook, his dark brow low- 
ered as he replied, " He .-* No ' how ' ! no swap, 
no biscuit." At the name of another Governor, his 
haughty Hp curled, his eye flashed scorn : " Ugh ! 
heap ' how,' no swap, no biscuit, d — n ! " 

It seems to me that this " satrap system," as 
I hear it called here, can best be defended on the 
principle of Guizot, that " the best government for 
the people is that which the people like least." 

I sincerely hope that, when Colorado comes into 
her appointed place among the sovereign States, 
she will not be beguiled by demagogues and polit- 
ical tricksters, but will choose for her rulers and 
representatives true representative men, actual set- 



128 COLORADO. 



tiers and pioneers, — men who, in the early, 
tumultuous, critical times, established and defended 
law and order, often at the risk of their lives and 
property. There are among these same old pio- 
neers men, yet in the prime of life, who know 
these mountains as Tell knew the Alps, and Bruce 
knew the Highlands, who love Colorado with a 
proud, manly devotion, who understand her re- 
sources, her interests, and her needs as no new- 
comer can, and whom she should honor, as they 
have honored her. 

I shall be obliged to leave Colorado without 
seeing Pike's Peak and the Garden of the Gods. 
The cold I took in coming down from the moun- 
tains resulted in quite a serious illness, which 
almost laid me aside altogether. Colorado catarrhs, 
like Colorado cabbages, are monsters of their kind. 
1 hope I shall live through mine, — that it is 
giving way at last. It may have saved me from 
something worse, — asthma, for instance. But it 
has not exactly rejuvenated me, made me stronger 
than I was before on platforms and constitu- 
tional amendments; in short, has not done all 
for me that a stroke of paralysis does for a great 
statesman. 



THE OTHER SIDE. I29 

It may be that heretofore my descriptions of life 
here have been colored too much by my own 
pleasant personal experiences. Other tourists, less 
fortunate or enthusiastic than I, might tell a slight- 
ly different story. A friend now living in George- 
town told me the other day that he was once so 
unlucky as to travel from Cheyenne to that place 
just behind Vice-President Colfax, Mr. Bowles, 
Governor Bross, and others, — a large party of 
gentlemen and ladies, — and that he actually suf- 
fered for lack of food. Now, it is easy to under- 
stand how Colorado, a land fruitful in delight to 
those distinguished locusts, should wear quite an- 
other and a more prosaic aspect to the poor fellow 
who followed and starved in their track. 

But well fed, well cared for in sickness and in 
health, I can only paint the Territory as I see 
it, — full of beauty and grandeur and promise ; and 
the people, as they have shown themselves to me, 
full of kindly and generous sympathies. If this 
be exaggeration, citizens of other Territories must 
make the most of it. 

I must not omit to mention an imposing and 
important ceremony which lately took place in this 
6* I 



130 COLORADO. 



vicinity. A party of clergymen assembled on the 
very summit of a certain lofty eminence, and just 
at sunrise solemnly dedicated the Rocky Moun- 
tains to the Lord. It was no light undertaking 
to forsake a comfortable bed, and make that steep 
ascent on a donkey and an empty stomach in the 
dreary morning twilight and chill mountain air ; 
and none but a body of pious, devoted men, bent 
on a great work of practical benevolence, a whole- 
sale missionary enterprise, could have been equal 
to it. But now it is done; and we may hope 
that stock-gambling and all other forms of gam- 
bling, all " wildcat " operations, all unbrotherly 
jumping of claims, all whiskey - drinking, sab- 
bath-breaking, and profane swearing, will speedily 
cease throughout that vast consecrated region. 
We may expect the heathen Utes to "come in," 
and look for larger Republican majorities than 
ever. In short, I shall leave the Rocky Moun- 
tains feeling tolerably easy in my mind. 



UTAH 



Salt Lake City, October 13, 1871. 

WE left Denver, my brother and I, on the 
9th. The morning was clear and brilliant, 
but very cold ; the great range was white with 
snow, and shone in the fair sunlight with sur- 
passing splendor ; while beautiful beyond all im- 
agination were the purple and violet tints of the 
lower range and the foot-hills. I really grieved at 
parting with these grand shapes, so majestic, 
yet so lovely, so stupendous and awful, yet so gra- 
cious and benignant, uplifting the soul, and filling 
it with thoughts of divine affluence and power and 
eternal repose. 

At Cheyenne we found the ground white with 
snow, and the air that of December. But we soon 
forgot all these things — the winter chill, the leaden 
sky — in the sorrowful news which here met us 
of the terrible fire in Chicago. We felt that it 



132 UTAH. 



was almost cruel and cowardly in us to pursue 
our way westward ; to go farther from dear friends, 
suffering, or in peril. At every station, till we 
reached Salt Lake City, the reports grew more 
sad and appalling. It almost seemed that the 
fierce flames followed us on the telegraph-wire, 
and burned the cruel tidings into our hearts. 
The sadness and anxiety would have been almost 
intolerable but for the sympathy and pleasant 
companionship of friends whom we were fortunate 
enough to meet at Cheyenne, — Senator and Mrs. 
Morton, their young son, and a party of ladies 
and gentlemen from Indianapolis. We were kindly 
invited into their special car, and owe to them 
much of the pleasure and comfort of the journey. 
Laramie, where we took supper, seems to me 
a town of considerable promise. It is situated 
in a beautiful valley, and has a spirited, cheerful 
air. We reached Sherman, the summit station, 
in a driving snow-storm, with heavy darkness in 
the southern horizon, — a drear, wild scene. But, 
even while we paused there, the sun broke forth 
radiantly; and we hailed it as a happy omen as 
we took our first plunge down toward the Pa- 



SHERMAN, THE SUMMIT STATION. 133 

cific. I was amused while at Sherman by watch- 
ing a little five-year-old vender of quartz crystals, 
who stood behind a rude counter near the rail- 
road track, carrying on a brisk trade with the 
passengers. It w^as a very small girl, with a very 
large bonnet, — a quaint, droll little figure, which 
Leech would have delighted to sketch. The wind 
was high, and had a way of snatching ofi' her 
bonnet just as she was engaged in making change, 
or putting her little portemonnaie into her little 
pocket. She alternated her commercial transac- 
tions with struggles to retain or regain her prepos- 
terous head-covering. To increase her embarass- 
ment, I flung her some fruit; and the last I saw 
of her she had just succeeded in capturing a 
pear, which had rolled down an embankment, 
and was again in wild pursuit of her bonnet. 
Along here we found snow-walls and snow-sheds, 
and sharp, bristhng rocks, which, with the wild 
wind and the black, stunted pines, made a pe- 
culiar and somewhat gloomy landscape. Yet, thus 
far on this journey across the continent, I have 
failed to be oppressed by the weary sense of des- 
olation and monotony I have heard so many com- 



134 UTAH. 



plain of. Even when, after rising in the morning, 
I looked out to see only " sage-brush, rock, and 
alkali, — alkali, rock, and sage," this strange, wild, 
forsaken region, this fierce, untamable, outlaw land, 
had not lost for me its grand novelty, its sombre 
interest. The widest, wildest level plain has to 
me, not only grandeur, but absolute beauty, — a 
sort of savagely peaceful and sullenly sublime 
' beauty, marvellously suggestive of immensity, of in- 
finity. What divine affluence, what magnificent 
abandonment, is here ! How rich must Nature be 
to afford to throw away so much ! Once I saw 
from the bluffs above Denver a mirage, — the de- 
lusive shining of waters away out on the arid 
plain. It seemed to me it was the phantom, the 
troubled ghost, of the sea that once sounded and 
surged over that silent, motionless waste of sand. 
Our way through Echo Canon was one long 
panorama of grand and lovely views. The rocks 
on the right are peculiarly bold in form and of 
indescribable beauty and variety of coloring. 
Through this canon ran the old stage-route : 
through it passed also the great tide of Mormon 
emigration. Several strong positions among the 



THE MORMON PILGRIMAGE. 135 



rocks are pointed out as having been fortified by 
Brigham Young when he anticipated an attack 
from government forces under General Joe John- 
ston. A Kttle way beyond towers Pulpit Rock, 
from which the prophet, priest, and king of this 
strange, devoted people is said to have preached 
his first sermon on this side the Rocky Moun- 
tains. To one who even whirls over in less than 
four days' time the route which this poor people 
toiled over through weeks and months, there must 
come a new and wondering realization of the hero- 
ism of that emigration, — an exodus into a land 
of dim promise, but of sure peril and privation, 
of mystery, of isolation. They fought with savage 
foes, they suffered, they starved : their graves 
yet mark the long, long way ; but they never 
murmured, nor rebelled, nor entreated to be led 
back to Egypt or Iowa. No cloud by day and 
no fire by night led them on, as they toiled 
over the mountain and crept across the plain ; 
but instead, there shone before them, perhaps, a 
prophetic vision of this pleasant city of refuge, 
and of the great white tabernacle of the Saints. 
Anomalous and anachronistic as is the faith of 



136 UTAH. 



this people, there is an antique fervor, a rugged 
sincerity, a stern persistency, an unconquerable 
constancy, about it which we must respect, 
even now, when fast on their hard-earned peace 
and prosperity comes the troublous time, the tem- 
pest of "judgment and fiery indignation," so long 
looming in the horizon. 

Weber Canon is scarcely so grand as Echo, but 
is very lovely and picturesque. It has some pe- 
culiar rocky formations and striking points well 
known to us through photographs, such as the 
Devil's Gate and the Devil's Slide. Wesley, I be- 
lieve, objects to the Devil having all the best tunes ; 
and it seems to me a pity that some of the best 
scenery in the grand New World should be ded- 
icated to him. 

Just at sunset we took the Utah Central at 
Ogden, for this city. The views of the Wasatch 
Mountains and of the Great Salt Lake, all down 
this wonderful valley, are indescribably beautiful. 
We stood out on the platform, and gazed till the 
purple twilight deepened and darkened, and that 
strange, lifeless inland sea glimmered and faded 
away into the night. 



THE MORMON CAPITAL. I37 

On arriving at Salt Lake City, Senator Morton 
and party were received by a deputation of prom- 
inent citizens, Mormon and Gentile. Among the 
latter gentlemen was our brilliant friend and rel- 
ative, Honorable Thomas Fitch, at whose charming 
house we are now staying. Senator Morton was, 
I think, welcomed by both parties, at this critical 
time, with much respect and confidence : his 
logical mind and clear, fearless judgment peculiarly 
fit him to look into this grave and complicated 
matter that is now drawing the attention of the 
world upon them. 

The morning after our arrival we drove about 
town with our kind friend Mr. Hooper, and were 
(may I confess it ?) quite delighted with the gen- 
eral appearance of the city which had so often 
been held up to our righteous horror as a con- 
gregation of " whited sepulchres." One is first 
struck by the generous width of the streets and 
the vast number of trees. Few of the dwelling- 
houses are elegant or tasteful, but they all look 
comfortable and sufficiently homelike. Embowered 
by foliage, they have a singularly secluded air. 
Some of them might have more tidy surround- 



138 UTAH. 



ings, and a brighter, livelier, more hospitable look ; 
but I remarked nothing particularly sombre, pa- 
gan, or polygamous about them. The poorest and 
smallest houses seemed to me an infinite advance 
on the homes of the English and Welsh laborers 
I had seen abroad. The little streams of clear 
mountain water running through all the streets 
are a bright, peculiar feature ; but pleasanter even 
than running water is the appearance everywhere 
of quiet industry and brave enterprise, order, and 
sobriety. Let us confess that this strange people, 
under their remarkable leader, have done a great 
work in rescuing this region from the desolation 
and sterility of uncounted ages ; in causing beau- 
ty and plenty to smile under the shadow of the 
dark mountains and along the shore of the slug- 
gish salt sea. 

The only odd — that is, monstrously odd — 
building here is the new Tabernacle. That looks 
like no other edifice on the face of the earth. 
So might have looked Noah's ark had it been 
capsized, and left high and dry on Ararat, keel 
upward. 

In the old Tabernacle we yesterday attended 



BRIGHAM YOUNG. I39 

a mass meeting-, called by the Mayor to raise 
money for the relief of the Chicago sufferers. 
Here we saw Brigham Young ; and I must confess 
to a great surprise. I had heard many descrip- 
tions of his personal appearance ; but I could not 
recognize the picture so often and elaborately 
painted. I did not see a common, gross-looking 
person, with rude manners, and a sinister, sensual 
countenance, but a well-dressed, dignified old gen- 
tleman, with a pale face, a clear gray eye, a 
pleasant smile, a courteous address, and withal a 
patriarchal, paternal air, which, of course, he comes 
rightly by. In short, I could see in his face or 
manner none of the profligate propensities and 
the dark crimes charged against this mysterious, 
masterly, many-sided, and many-wived man. The 
majority of the citizens of Salt Lake present on 
this occasion were Mormons, — some of them the 
very polygamists arraigned for trial ; and it was a 
strange thing to see these men, standing at bay, 
with " the people of the United States " against 
them, giving generously to their enemies. It either 
shows that they have, underlying their fanatical 
faith and their Mohammedan practices, a better 



140 UTAH, 



religion of humanity, or that they understand the 
wisdom of a return of good for evil just at this 
time. It is either rare Christian charity or masterly 
worldly policy ; or, perhaps, it is about half and 
half Human nature is a good deal mixed out 
here. But I do not suppose it will matter to the 
people of dear, desolate Chicago what the motive 
was that prompted the generous offerings from 
this fair city among the mountains. The hands 
stretched out in help, whether polygamic or mo- 
nogamic, are to them the hands of friends and broth- 
ers. Certain it is that the Saints seemed to give 
gladly and promptly, according to their means. Presi- 
dent Young gave in his thousand, and the elders 
their five hundred each, as quietly as the poor breth- 
ren and sisters their modest tribute of fractional 
currency. It is thought that Utah will raise at 
least twenty thousand dollars. 

There is to me, I must acknowledge, in this 
prompt and liberal action of the Mormon people, 
something strange and touching. It is Hagar 
ministering to Sarah : it is Ishmael giving a 
brotherly lift to Isaac. 



GENERAL VIEWS. 141 



October 17, 1871. 

The more I see of this place the more I am 
impressed by the wonderful, wild beauty of its sur- 
roundings. Each of two windows out of which I 
can look as I write is the frame of an enchanting 
picture, — the green and fruitful valley, dotted with 
pleasant homes ; the distant shining of water ; brown 
plateau ; dark canons ; mountains, bold and jagged 
and snow-crowned, with their bleak slopes softened 
here and there with lovely autumn tints. The 
mountains are far less grand than those seen from 
Denver, but they are much nearer, and are seldom 
obscured by mists. The cold season was inaugu- 
rated here by a furious wind, rain, and snow storm. 
The nights are almost wintry, but the mornings 
are brilliant, the days dazzling with keen, continuous 
sunlight, and the sunsets gorgeous beyond descrip- 
tion. On Saturday we drove up the valley, finding 
charming new views at every rise or turn. The 
whole region has a singularly foreign aspect, strange 
and ancient and solemn. In its strong contrasts 
of gardens and waste places, of busy life and silent 
desolation, of hoary mount and arid plain, it cer- 
tainly, independent of Scripture nomenclature, re- 
minds one of Palestine. 



142 UTAH. 



In coming in, we drove past the residence of 
President Young, the Lion House. In that 
house there are many mansions ; that is, the vari- 
ous dweUings required for that vast extension ar- 
rangement, the imperial polygamic family, are most- 
ly within one enclosure. The wall is high and 
broad, and gives a look of seclusion and dignity 
to the place. Within these walls are also the 
" tithing-houses," to which the Mormon farmers, 
gardeners, and fruit-raisers bring yearly a tenth part 
of their produce. Merchants, manufacturers, me- 
chanics, miners, etc., bring a tenth part of their 
income. This seems hard in some cases ; but I 
doubt not that in most cases this contribution to 
the mother church that brooded them so well in 
their callow days is cheerfully made ; and I am 
assured that, under the direction and superintend- 
ence of their wise old leader, workingmen of the 
classes which here " most do congregate " do far 
better with their remaining nine tenths than they 
could do elsewhere without such direction and su- 
perintendence. Adjoining the Lion House grounds 
is Temple Block. Here are, in addition to the 
foundation of the great Temple, the Tabernacle 



MORMON OFFICIAL BUILDINGS. I43 

and the Endowment House. The Temple is to be 
built of native granite (which, by the way, is of 
a very fine quality), and is expected to cost several 
millions. The plan was given to Brigham Young 
in a vision : , let us hope by the spirit of Michael 
Angelo or Sir Christopher Wren, if agreeable to 
them. ; Architecturally the new Tabernacle is scarce- 
ly an improvement on the old, except in size. It 
is the plainest possible structure ; but there is about 
it a sort of grotesque grandeur of originality and 
immensity. Acoustically it is thought a great suc- 
cess ; but when not filled, there is an unpleasant 
reverberation, giving the effect of two distinct ser- 
vices in full blast. The other day, when one of 
the Mormon preachers was defending " the insti- 
tution," and waxed bold and passionate, a clear, 
emphatic echo to each word seemed to come from 
somewhere away down below. The Endowment 
House is where the " plural marriages " all take 
place, with various forms and ceremonies. I am 
told by a gentleman who has access to the records, 
that within the past year or two there has been 
a great and significant falling off in the business 
of this establishment. The numerical majority of 



144 UTAH. 



women in the Territory is not so great as it once 
was : railroads and telegraphs, and discoveries of 
mines, travel and traffic, bring new men, new 
ideas, new light. 

The theatre is a large and handsome building, 
a really wonderful structure, considering the time 
when it was built, — before the prosperous days, 
when everything had to be done by the hardest, 
— when all materials for building were fearfully 
expensive, and difficult to obtain at any price, — 
when, to use the strong language of a poetic friend, 
" the very stones cost blood." A Mormon gen- 
tleman tells me that the theatre was built, more 
as a necessity than a luxury, to relieve the wea- 
risome monotony and isolation of life out here. 
The leaders, sagacious as indulgent, saw that the 
people must have some relaxation and recreation. 
In those early days, there was little money in the 
town, and people were allowed to pay at the door 
in grain, potatoes, — almost any marketable com- 
modity. 

We attended service in the new Tabernacle on 
Sunday morning. The building was not filled, — 
it takes fifteen thousand people to do that, — but 



SERVICE IN THE GREAT TABERNACLE. I45 

we had a tolerably good opportunity to observe 
the character and appearance of a Mormon assem- 
bly. Brigham Young was in his usual place of 
honor, but did not preach, because of some ail- 
ment of the chest from which he is suffering. He 
is habitually pale of late ; but nothing of anxiety or 
even nervousness is betrayed in his proud, set face. 
Neither is there anything of bluster or bravado in 
his manner and conversation. He has rather the 
look and air of a man who has met and overcome 
so much opposition, so many difficulties, that a cool 
and quiet confidence in his own particular star has 
become the habit of his mind. He would call it reli- 
ance upon God ; but I believe there is in the man 
less fanaticism than fatalism, — that magnificent con- 
ceit of imperial and magnetic natures, of all mould- 
ers of systems, and masters and leaders of men. 

The services in that prodigious and portentous 
temple of this new, old faith — this strange con- 
glomerate of Christianity, Judaism, and Mohamme- 
danism — were quite simple, orderly, and orthodox 
in character. There was prayer, choir-singing, music 
of the great organ, and a sermon from a text, fol- 
lowed by two volunteer discourses. The last was by 
7 



146 UTAH. 



Brother Cannon, editor of the Deseret News, one 
of the ablest speakers, debaters, and writers among 
this pecuhar people, and a very pleasant gentleman. 
It was noticeable that all the speakers on this oc- 
casion were on the defensive in regard to both the 
civil and religious character of their theocratic gov- 
ernment, and especially in regard to the institution 
of polygamy. There was a large attendance of Gen- 
tiles ; and the present critical situation of the Mor- 
mon Church and its "beloved and venerable head" 
was touched upon with considerable spirit and feel- 
ing, but with, on the whole, caution and moderation. 
It is true they spoke of possible martyrdom, of 
holding themselves ready to die for the faith deliv- 
ered to the Saints ; but nothing was said or inti- 
mated of actual rebellion against the authority of 
the United States. Indeed, there were strong pro- 
fessions of loyalty and a law-abiding spirit. Mr. 
Cannon eulogized very eloquently the general char- 
acter of the Mormons, claimed that before the influx 
of the Gentiles they were the most peaceful, con- 
tented, industrious, thrifty people on the continent ; 
that they were still the most temperate, virtuous, 
and inoffensive. He claimed that women were more 



SENTIMENTS OF THE LEADERS. I47 

respected and safer from insult among the Mormons 
than in any other community ; that any woman 
could travel alone through Utah as securely and 
honorably as the fair lady of legend and song, who, 
though "rich and rare were the gems she wore," 
made a pilgrimage through Ireland in its palmy 
and pious days. I am inclined to think the 
speaker in that last assertion spoke only truth. I 
beUeve, also, that Mormon husbands are generally 
kind in their treatment of their several wives. 
Otherwise, the condition would be too utterly in- 
tolerable for human woman-nature, however much 
sanctified and " sealed." 

Though Mr. Cannon handled polygamy boldly 
and fully, he did not defend it on philosophical 
or physiological principles, or on grounds of po- 
litical or domestic economy, but simply on a " thus- 
saith-the-Lord " presumption, as a religious doctrine 
and duty imposed by direct Divine command. 
Here they stand entrenched. No arguments can 
move them, no logic or sentiment can touch them. 
Granted the divine authority and inspiration of 
Joseph Smith and Brigham Young, the acceptance 
of polygamy follows as a matter of course. The 



148 UTAH. 



speaker declared that the carrying out of this 
command was a cross to both the brethren and 
sisters, opposed as it was to the old tastes and 
prejudices, and especially repugnant to the un- 
chastened impulses of woman's nature. I should 
think so. 

You hear a good deal about that " cross " from 
both Mormon husbands and wives, but you only 
see the shadow of it in the faces of the women. 
I do not mean to intimate that they all look de- 
cidedly unhappy. There is rather in their faces 
a quiet, baffling, negative, and abnegative expres- 
sion, which certainly is as far from happy con- 
tent as it is from desperate rebellion. Naturally, 
they are more alive to the outside pressure of 
public opinion, more sensitive to the obloquy 
and ostracism which their position provokes, than 
men. Patient and passive as they seem, they 
feel these things keenly, — the more intelligent 
among them, at least ; and, though upheld by a 
sincere faith in this strange delusion, they have 
toward strangers a peculiar air of reticence and 
mistrust, almost of repulsion. I do not wonder 
at it : their hospitality and confidence have often 



MORMON WIVES. I49 



been abused ; they have been intruded upon by 
impertinent interviewers, and their reluctant an- 
swers to persistent questioning published abroad, 
with startling additions and dramatic embellish- 
ments. Those I have met appear to me, I must 
say, like good and gentle Christian women. They 
are singularly simple in dress and modest in de- 
meanor. What saddens me is their air of extreme 
quietude, retirement, and repression. But for the 
children around them, you would think some of 
them were women who had done with this world. 
I am told that the wives of even the highest 
Mormon dignitaries show little pride in their lords. 
It were, perhaps, difficult to feel much pride in the 
sixteenth part of a man, as men go. Even the 
first wife of a wealthy saint betrays in her hus- 
band and household, they say, no exultant joy of 
possession. An investment in a Mormon heart 
and home must be rather uncertain stock for a 
woman. I am assured, though, that the second 
wife is seldom taken without the consent of the 
first. Not only are the poor woman's religious 
faith and zeal appealed to, but her magnanimity 
toward her sister-woman out in the cold. It must 



150 UTAH. 



be through great suffering that such heights of 
self-abnegation are reached. The crucifixion of the 
divine weakness of a loving woman's heart must be 
a severe process. But there is some sorry comfort 
in the thought that for these poor polygamous 
wives there is no wearing uncertainty, no feverish 
anxiety ; that they are spared the bitterest pain of 
jealousy, the vague nightmare torture of suspicion, 
the grief and horror of the final discovery, the 
fierce sense of treachery and deception. They know 
the worst. Perhaps it is this dead certainty that 
gives them the peculiar, cold, still look I have re- 
ferred to. As to the Mormon men whom I have 
met, mostly leaders in the church, and prominent, 
well-to-do citizens, I must say that they look re- 
markably care-free, and even jolly, under the cross. 
Virgil, I believe, has somewhere the expression, 
" O three times and four times happy ! " Well, 
that is the way they look. 

It was easy to see by the discourses on Sun- 
day that there is in the church something of 
solicitude, if not consternation, in regard to the 
situation of its President, arraigned for high crimes 
and misdemeanors before a hostile local tribunal, 



A MORMON CONGREGATION. 151 

from which there is no appeal. But each speaker 
professed perfect reliance on that God who had 
once delivered them out of the hands of their ene- 
mies, and led them across the desert, and blessed 
them with peace and abundance in this pleasant 
land. As they spoke thus, strangely as it seemed 
to me, mingHng faith with fatalism, and submis- 
sion with resistance, and humility with arrogance, 
like the specious reasoners, practised debaters, and 
clever and confident managers of men that they 
are, the faces of their Mormon hearers glowed with 
a quiet satisfaction and a revival of the old fa- 
natical fervor which, I am told, had begun to die 
out of these people, perhaps with the incoming of 
new social influences, and the increase of worldly 
prosperity and ease. It only needed a blast of 
persecution to fan the dying flame. 

I marked in this audience many a rugged, manly 
head, and now and then a fine, strong face, hon- 
estly earnest and hungry for truth ; but little in- 
dication of refinement or culture, or, except among 
the leaders, of decided characteristic worldly shrewd- 
ness. It was a great congregation of common peo- 
ple, rising slowly from an uncommonly low con- 



152 UTAH. 



dition of life and intelligence. Utah is the poor 
man's paradise, and that is the best of it. The 
worst of it is, that ' the trail of the polygamous 
serpent is over it all. Till a laborer gets rich 
enough to support two wives, he can live as de- 
cently and virtuously here as in any tenement - 
house in New York. None of the religious forms 
and observances short of those of the Endowment 
House harm him much. Were it not for this 
one reproach, the Mayor and Common Council of 
Salt Lake City could stand up before the chiefs 
of Tammany and be bold, boasting that they 
rule over a city where among their own people 
there are no riots, no rings, no burglaries, no 
drinking -saloons, no gambling -hells, no disorderly 
and infamous houses of any kind, no street - 
beggars, no incendiaries, no prize-fighters, — a city 
in which wages are high and taxes are low. 

Yesterday we drove out into the country to take 
a look at some of the farms. They have a neat, 
thriving appearance, with good buildings, and show 
evidences of having produced fine crops. The irri- 
gating ditches are everywhere beautifying, having 
more the look of natural streams than those in 



MORMON FARMS. 153 



Colorado. All the farm - houses are surrounded 
with foliage. Brigham Young is a great lover of 
trees, and seems to make their culture a tenet 
of his religion. As the old lady said of total 
depravity, " It 's a good doctrine if well lived up 
to." Utah fruit is not of the finest quality, as 
little attention has yet been paid to its cultivation, 
but it is grown in great abundance and consider- 
able variety. It is a consolation, while looking at 
these pleasant, homelike places, to remember that 
not more than one tenth part of the people of 
Utah are polygamists. It is also something to 
know that even amongst the poorest the different 
wives do not live actually together. , Each has a 
house, or half a house, or a set of rooms, to her- 
self Mr. Godbe, the able leader of the leading 
sect called after him, professes to base his oppo- 
sition to polygamy on the fact of its being " at 
variance with the principle of woman's equality 
with man, and therefore inimical to her happi- 
ness." That is the true ground to stand upon. 

October 20. 

A few days ago we drove out to Camp Doug- 
las, which has a grand position, close up against 



154 UTAH. 



the mountains, and commanding the town. The 
late reinforcements, sent on in view of the situa- 
tion, give to this fine military position a very busy 
and belligerent air. The barracks seem full, and 
there are several companies encamped on the first 
plateau. What a magnificent mark for artillery 
would the great Tabernacle be from here ! It seems 
to me that a good, moral, monogamous mortar 
would almost open upon it of itself. But I don't be- 
lieve that any of these mighty engines of a Christian 
civilization will be brought into play on the strong- 
holds of the survivor of the famous " twin bar- 
barisms " very soon. I don't believe these brave 
fellows are to have an early opportunity to mow 
down saints militant by the score, and make wid- 
ows by the fourscore. It is true, this people 
are roused, rallied, and consolidated by legal pro- 
ceedings, which they consider religious persecu- 
tions and blasphemous indignities offered to their 
divinely inspired leader, and doubtless would break 
out in open rebellion if he should say the word. 
But he will not say the word. Age has not only 
frosted his head, but sprinkled cool patience on 
his bold and fiery spirit. However it was at first, 



POLYGAMOUS PROBLEMS. 155 

I am convinced that he has grown to believe in 
himself and his mission. He says, " If my work 
is a good work, it will stand. If our religion is 
of God, it cannot be put down." The world he 
went out of thirty years ago has followed him, and 
surrounded him in his rocky fastnesses, and he is 
facing the situation with a good deal of dignity. 
When arraigned the other day he showed no re- 
sentment or dismay, but quietly and firmly plead- 
ed "not guilty" to the charge or charges. 

I cannot but think it a matter to be regretted 
that there could not have been a fair open fight 
against that most monstrous anomaly of our age 
and country, that most unnatural and audacious 
alhance of civilization with barbarism, — the insti- 
tution of polygamy itself If that cannot be at- 
tacked directly and effectually through present 
laws, would it not have been better to have wait- 
ed till laws could be framed to grapple with it 
and overthrow it utterly } Or could we not have 
depended on moral means, — brought against a 
system born of delusion and a spirit of desperate 
propagandism, and nourished by ignorance and iso- 
lation, the power of a higher civilization, a purer 



156 UTAH. 



religion ? Already it is being weakened and under- 
mined by the subtle, restless, perpetually augment- 
ing forces of commerce and social intercourse, — 
education, literature, free thought, — by the railroad, 
the telegraph, the printing-press. It is girdled with 
a fire of intelligence. Light, love, death, are allied 
against it. As it is, a sort of legal trap has 
been sprung upon the polygamists. They are ar- 
raigned, and are to be tried under an old statute 
passed by a Mormon Legislature against " adultery," 
as they understood that crime. Of course, the 
law must be twisted from the original spirit and 
intention to be made to bear upon plural mar- 
riages. Brigham Young, as governor, signed this 
statute, the most severe upon record, against that 
particular crime. He must now regard that sig- 
nature as the slain eagle regarded the familiar 
feather " that winged the shaft that pierced him 
to the heart." 

I know that there are at this time many, not 
only politicians and speculators, but good, honest, 
Christian people, who look on these prosecutions 
in Utah with joy and full approval. They see, 
under the iron grip of the law, polygamy, not 



THE MORMON LEADER. 157 

only Struck with death, but already in articido 
mortis ; but I must confess that, whichever way 
I regard the probable issue, I feel some anxiety 
and misgiving. Unless the principal prosecution 
be carried through sternly and triumphantly, and 
this powerful, defiant representative of a polyga- 
mic theocracy, this New World Mohammed, be hum- 
bled, rebuked, dispossessed of his dominion and 
his harem ; unless he is punished as any poor 
man would be punished for the same crime, under 
the same law ; if there is any giving way, any 
retreat, any failure on the part of the govern- 
ment, it seems to me that the result can but 
be a disaster for us, and a triumph for Mormon- 
ism. On the other hand, if the law be inexorably 
executed, and its utmost penalties inflicted, there 
will almost inevitably follow trouble, confusion, 
strife, even bloodshed. Whatever evil can be said 
of Brigham Young, however dark and blood- 
stained pages of his record may be, the man 
loves his fellow-men, in his way, and is loved by 
them. The poorest and humblest of his followers 
love him the most devotedly and blindly. The 
little they have and are they owe to him. He 



158 UTAH. 



took them from the black mines and crowded 
factories, from the garrets and cellars and slums 
of Europe ; brought them to a land of promise ; 
taught them how to work, to live ; expounded 
to them a religion simple, perhaps gross enough 
for their comprehension, yet having about it 
something that appeals strongly to their undisci- 
ciplined imaginations. Arbitrary, ambitious, av- 
aricious though he be, he has been to them 
prince, priest, prophet, and father. I believe they 
will never quietly look on, and see him impris- 
oned or any way harshly dealt with. Resistance 
against the whole power of the United States 
may be rash and hopeless, — even to them it must 
look so ; but nothing is so rash, so mad, as fa- 
naticism. I believe that in the last extremity 
they will fight for him, even against his will ; and 
there are a hundred thousand of them. As no 
Mormon can be expected to render a ''just ver- 
dict, according to the law and the testimony," in 
this case, as no polygamist can possibly be 
qualified, the jury must, of course, be packed. 
What it was thought not a good or a safe thing 
to do in Richmond, in the case of the chief 



RESULTS OF A CRASH. I59 

of the Confederacy, may, perhaps, be righteously 
and safely done in Salt Lake City, in the case 
of the despised leader of an outcast people ; but 
in establishing so perilous a precedent, may we 
not pay too dearly for even the great good of 
the destruction of polygamy and Mormonism to- 
gether, the breaking up of this wicked, thriving 
community ; the scattering of this deluded peo- 
ple as mendicants and missionaries over the 
world, and the restoration of all this perverted 
region to its primitive innocence and desolation ? 
The hardest consequences of the sudden and 
forcible breaking up of the system of polygamy 
would be visited on the ones who . suffer most 
everywhere, in social convulsions and overturn- 
ings, and are everywhere the least guilty, — the 
women and children. It would take from hun- 
dreds of Mormon wives the little title to the 
world's tolerance they now possess, destroy their 
self-respect, and drive them from their — from 
the places they call home. They have mostly 
entered on the relation in good faith, in a blind 
belief that it was of Divine appointment. Even 
when convinced of their error, dishonor and want 



l6o UTAH 



have barred their way of escape, and children's 
arms have held them back. Aside from their 
own interests or belief, they oppose a measure 
which would scatter and bastardize their chil- 
dren. For these reasons the women of Utah, 
though in full possession of the ballot, have failed 
to fulfil the prophecy of Miss Dickinson, to 
"vote themselves free and virtuous." 

You are struck by the great number of chil- 
dren everywhere here. Some houses absolutely 
overflow with them, some tables are embowered 
in " olive branches." The different sets get along 
very well together generally ; but that is little 
wonder, after the miracle of agreement between 
the mothers. Polygamy does not seem to spare 
women the cares of maternity. I know a Mor- 
mon household in which two middle-aged wives 
count about two dozen children between them. 
I took two little fair-haired girls for twins ; and 
they were a sort of polygamic twins, born almost 
at the same time, in the same house, of dif- 
ferent mothers. It seems to me that the children 
here do not look as happy and bright as in 
our towns ; I fancy that the little girls, at least, 



MORMON WIVES AND CHILDREN. l6l 

have something of the subdued, repressed look 
of their mothers. But some few of them are 
pretty, and nearly all neatly and comfortably 
dressed. I hear that they have very good schools, 
and are under good discipline at home, answering 
to the roll-call at night, and duly honoring their 
father and their mothers. 

Many Mormon wives are sisters, and it is said 
they get along quite harmoniously. The very na- 
ture of women seems to be changed here, and 
turned upside down and inside out. An intelli- 
gent " first wife " told a Gentile neighbor that the 
only wicked feeling she had about her husband 
taking a second wife was that he did not take 
her sister, who wanted him, or, rather, a share in 
him. She would have liked to have the property 
kept in the family. I saw, the other day, a 
pair of young wives, sisters, walking hand in hand, 
dressed alike in every particular, of the same 
height and complexion, and of the same apparent 
age ; indeed, looking so exactly alike that it was 
almost a case of mitigated bigamy. It must 
seem queer, even to them, to say " our husband," 
as they used to say " our piano " or " our pony." 



l62 UTAH. 



The most singular and unnatural marriages 
here are those of men with their wives' mothers. 
These are not unfrequent. It strikes me this is 
a seditious plot against immemorial domestic au- 
thority, the most ancient court of feminine ap- 
peal, — that it is an attempt to do away with 
mothers-in-law. When young wives are taken, 
the three or four or five do not always become 
one flesh ; there is sometimes rebellion and even 
hostility on the part of the old wife. Occasion- 
ally a husband objects to having even a second 
wife imposed on him. I heard of one the other 
day who, though he finally submitted to the com- 
mand of the imperial Brigham that he should 
take and provide for a certain poor woman, — 
" a lone, lorn cretur," — declared that he couldn't 
" abear her," and at once put her away on a 
ranch forty miles from town — pensioned and 
pastured her out. This system has its serious 
and perplexing aspect; it is a fearful problem, 
which, like the riddle of the sphynx, may prove 
the destruction of those who attempt rashly to 
solve it and fail ; but it has also its ludicrous, 
its grotesque aspects, and they always strike me 



A LEGAL NOVELTY. 163 

first, though the laugh they provoke is quickly 
succeeded by a sad realization, sweeping over 
me like a great, bitter wave, of all there is in 
it of error, of suffering, and of peril. 

October 24. 

This is a strange place, full of all sorts of 
social, religious, and political anomalies and con- 
tradictions, where things generally are curiously 
mixed up and reversed. And now we have a 
new thing in the legal way, a startling novelty 
in the long, dull history of jurisprudence. In 
the trial of Hawkins, the polygamist, last week, 
a wife appeared in court to testify against her 
husband in a criminal prosecution, and, by her 
testimony, convicted him. To be sure, it was a 
Mormon wife, and Mormon wives are not sup- 
posed to be much married ; but the fact seems 
to be significant of something more, perhaps, 
than extraordinary and extra-judicial proceedings 
here in Utah. The legal, poetic, and time-honored 
fiction of the " sacred oneness " of husband and 
wife has received its first stupefying blow, not 
in a convention of free-lovers nor from a Mor- 



164 UTAH. 



mon high-priest, but in a Federal court and 
from an orthodox judge. 

Hawkins, the man just tried, is an EngHshman 
of the lowest order, and a very disreputable 
specimen of a saint. There are bad saints as 
well as good sinners. He had brutally abused 
this his first wife, the love of his youth, who 
had borne him many children, and at last he 
insisted on bringing into the same house two 
younger spouses. The society of these ladies 
was not agreeable to her, but he stood on his 
" Gospel privileges," and compelled her by threats 
and blows to put up with it. A man who will 
beat his wife under Victoria, will not always have 
the grace to spare her under Brigham. Ill-used 
wives frequently appeal to that power which is 
absolute and ubiquitous in the Territory, and 
whose action is usually prompt and decisive. 
They carry all their intolerable burdens to the 
Lion House. So these Mormon wives declare 
that at the worst they are better off here than 
in the old country, where there was no division 
in the beatings, and no Brigham to appeal to. 

I am told that this wronged wife gave in her 



A REBELLIOUS WIFE. 165 

testimony against her brutal husband readily, 
eagerly, as though glad that her day had come 
at last. Usually with the acceptance of the 
Mormon faith, the most high-spirited women 
seem to "suffer a sad change, into something 
meek and strange," but there seems to be a 
good deal of human nature left in this particu- 
lar woman. I am glad of it, though she has 
shocked the Mormon community by dragging the 
sanctities of a polygamic household into a Gen- 
tile court. This is the first of these most im- 
portant trials, and it is a very ugly case for the 
Saints. I am thankful that I am not a Deb- 
orah, set to judge this Israel. \ But if I were, I 
should pray God for grace to render a just and 
impartial judgment, for wisdom and courage and 
charity. It is hard, perhaps, for a zealous mon- 
ogamic magistrate to remember that these strange 
people are our fellow-beings, that the most per- 
verse polygamist of them all is entitled to the 
benefit of the Golden Rule. Even I, with no 
political, sectarian, or mercenary interests to bias 
me, find it dif^cult to speak temperately of an 
institution which is for woman a back-set into 



l66 UTAH. 



barbarism, systematized degradation, and torture. 
I find it almost impossible to believe that Mor- 
mon law-makers may be as conscientious in re- 
ligionizing polygamy as are our Christian legisla- 
tors in legalizing prostitution. " Plural marriage " 
is to me, of course, only vice, sanctioned and 
protected, and must be simply revolting to all 
who come here firom favored and refined com- 
munities in the States, where there is nothing 
of the sort, — under that name at least. It is 
impossible for me to pass by the prettiest Mor- 
mon home without shuddering at the thought of 
the tragedies in women's lives that may be pass- 
ing under its roof; of course one never has 
such thoughts in passing elegant houses in East- 
ern cities, where wives are free and happy and 
husbands are loving and loyal. I even find it 
hard when reading the Scriptural texts on 
street-signs to refrain from laughing, out of re- 
spect to our Puritan fathers and the early Meth- 
odists and Quakers, who were also given to cant. 
I can only have patience with the most ignorant 
of these people, when they tell of miracles and 
angelic appearances, by remembering the miraculous 



MORMON HOTELS. 167 

things told and believed of the Wesleys and 
George Fox and countless Catholic saints. 

But why should I expect to always " abound in 
charity," when even ministers of the Gospel some- 
times get quite out of the article ? Some of them 
have lately written of the Mormons as being uni- 
versally, not only as polygamous, but as murderous, 
as the old fighting patriarchs, as so many Ishma- 
els and outlaws, vicious, depraved, disorderly, sen- 
sual, devilish. 

I noticed in a late New York journal the report 
of a discourse by a distinguished clergyman who 
has lately crossed the continent, and who complained 
that, when in this new City of the Plain, he was 
compelled to stop at a Mormon hotel, and that 
he was annoyed by Mormon card-players in the 
next room, whose conversation was neither edify- 
ing nor proper. There are Gentile hotels in the 
town : the reverend gentleman should not be so 
bent on going to the most fashionable hostelry. 
His experience reminds me of one of my own, at 
a hotel in a certain town in the State of Indiana. 
It was court time, and the next room to mine 
was occupied till a late hour by a card party of 



l68 UTAH. 



lawyers and judges ; the partition was thin, and 
I was horrified and disgusted by the profanity, and 
worse than profanity, that made "night hideous." 
These legal gentlemen were not given to much 
marrying, but they did a great business in the 
divorce line. People who have lived here a long 
time say that such a thing as a card-playing Mor- 
mon is almost unknown. Gambling in all its forms 
is an offence subjecting one to church discipline. 
The reverend doctor was probably mistaken ; the 
profane midnight revellers at the Townsend House 
(a hotel which we found remarkably quiet and 
orderly) may not have been these rude, hard- 
working Mormons at all ; they may have been 
gentlemen, or Gentile-men. 

Another clergyman, one of a zealous missionary 
band who came out here last summer to hold a 
great camp-meeting, reported that they only held 
their sessions in safety and escaped out of the val- 
ley aUve, through the presence and protection of 
a volunteer guard of armed miners, five hundred 
strong. Doubtless the worthy man believes his 
own astonishing statement, being well exercised in 
faith ; but all sorts of people here, who know the 



RELIGIOUS FREEDOM. 169 

men, laugh at the idea of five hundred busy miners 
turning out to a camp-meeting, even with the 
prospect of a fight, as something hugely funny and 
preposterous. If no converts were made at that 
camp-meeting from the Mormon Church, it was not 
because of any special counter - effort or active 
opposition. The truth is, Brigham Young, with his 
usual quiet cunning and knowledge of such human 
nature as he has had to deal with, took the matter 
very coolly, advised his people to go to the meet- 
ings, to calmly listen to all their opponents had to 
say, and to learn all they could. He sent his 
bishops to keep order among the younger and more 
turbulent Mormons ; he even went himself, and at 
one time, while a preacher was bitterly denouncing 
polygamy and ^other doctrines of the Latter-Day 
Saints, and some of those badly hit began to mur- 
mur and threaten, and an outbreak seemed inev- 
itable, the mere raising of his hand in a quiet, 
repressing gesture stayed all violence, hushed every 
angry voice. His people rest quiet under his 
strong, supreme will, and actually fancy, because 
there is no bluster about it, that they have perfect 
religious freedom. There is little squirming under 
the velvet paw. 



lyo UTAH. 



When Christian charity gives out, " Give the 
Devil his due," is a safe principle to fall back on. 
This is doubtless a wicked place, but it does not 
monopolize the wickedness of the great Republic. 
The Tabernacle has left something to Tammany. 
Brigham Young may be chief among the left-hand 
"goats," but he did not carry all the sins of the 
people into the wilderness. 

Now, from all I have been able to observe and 
from all I hear from intelligent Gentiles long resi- 
dent here, I am convinced that the Mormon people 
generally are remarkably quiet, orderly, sober, and 
industrious, strongly and especially addicted to 
minding their own business. However much the 
leaders may be given to proselyting, the common 
people never intrude their peculiar tenets and 
ideas upon you ; but if you inquire concerning 
them, they will plainly and seriously answer your 
questions, and, in most cases, while struck by the 
absurdity or revolted by the moral obliquity of 
those ideas, you are convinced of the absolute 
sincerity of the simple-hearted expounders. 

As to Brigham Young, we must all admit, even 
in this his time of trouble and threatened over- 



A SAGACIOUS RULER. 171 

throw, that, considering the elements he has had 
to deal with, — the rudest, the poorest, the most 
ignorant classes of men, for the greater part a con- 
glomerate of the lowest strata of civilized socie- 
ties, — " the offscouring of the earth," as he him- 
self once called them, — considering the hard con- 
ditions of early emigration and settlement, he has 
formed a wonderful working colony, unparalleled 
for vigor, constancy, and cohesion ; has created a 
State, almost a nation, in this wild, desert land ; 
and, on the whole, has governed it surpassingly 
well. But for his one fatal mistake, the man 
might have left to other times a noble fame, if 
not for inspired leadership, for masterly sagacity ; 
if not as a prophet of the Lord, as a benefac- 
tor of the Lord's poor ; if not as the priest of a 
new religion, as the founder of a new common- 
wealth. 



NEVADA. 



Virginia City, October 24. 

I LEFT the quaint capital of Mormondom on 
the loveliest of a long succession of lovely 
autumn days. The beautiful valley of the Great 
Salt Lake was brimmed with golden sunshine, 
and rich purple lights were on all the hills. 

Ogden is all alive nowadays with excitement 
over a great tin-mine, said to be immensely valu- 
able. Experienced Cornish miners report the ore 
unusually fine, and there are vast deposits. 

We had a moonlight night of surpassing beauty, 
which bewitched me out of half my sleep, and 
yet I waked in time to see a sunrise painting 
sky and mountain with wonderful, gorgeous colors. 
I found nothing tiresome or disagreeable in all 
that day's travel. I did not rebel against the 
eternal dull sage-brush below, when the sky was 
full of ever -varying clouds, and the sunlight 



THE HEATHEN CHINEE APPEARS. 173 

touched every object with tender, impartial rays. 
Even the alkali dust annoyed me little, as it was 
cold enough to have all the windows closed. Still, 
it was pleasant to come upon grazing valleys and 
rocks and canons again. The palisades in Twelve- 
Mile Canon are very grand and beautiful, and 
the Devil's Peak is a highly satisfactory diaboli- 
cal feature in the wild landscape ; and all along 
the valley of the Humboldt there are pictures 
of savage grandeur and quiet beauty which al- 
ternately rouse and rest one. On that day we 
were first waited upon at table by soft -footed, 
white - robed, moon - faced Orientals. I find the 
Chinese very agreeable as waiters. They put on 
no superior Littimer airs, yet are so utterly re- 
moved from all interest in you and your affairs, 
feeyond the business in hand, that, with half a 
dozen about you, you have a delightful sense of 
privacy, and should no more think of dismissing 
Chinese servants for better after-dinner freedom 
in conversation, than of sending away the tea- 
tray, lest its painted mandarins should listen and 
gossip. There is " no speculation " in their eyes. 
The sleeping and the dead and the Chinese are but 
as pictures. 



174 NEVADA. 



At Reno I left the train for Virginia City. 
It was after midnight, but the weather was mild 
and the moonlight resplendent ; so a mountain 
stage-ride of twenty miles had no terrors for me. 
We had six good horses that sturdily toiled up 
the long grade, and gallantly dashed down the 
declivities, and whirled us around rocky points in 
magnificent style. But gradually the stifling dust, 
the rising wind, and ever -increasing cold, clouds, 
and mists prophesying storm, and the vice -like 
jam of an overcrowded coach changed what 
had seemed to me a pleasant adventure into a 
most fatiguing and uncomfortable journey. In the 
gray, uncertain light of a dawn that grew slowly 
and sullenly into the only dreary, dreadful day I 
have seen on this coast, I reached Virginia, 
famous as the home of " Tom Flynn " and Laura 
Fair, and somewhat celebrated as the city set 
on the hill, whose foundations are of silver and 
gold, and whose gates open downward into the 
more wonderful underground city of the Corn- 
stock Lode. 

There was no room for me at the inn. I did 
not quite lodge in the manger, but in an apartment 



A DRY STORM. 175 



scarcely more desirable. It was an awful day ; the 
wind rose to the dignity of a tornado, dry at first, 
swirling about old Mount Davidson, and whelming 
the town in thick gray clouds of dust ; then came 
the rain, swift and furious as hail. Between the 
gusts I caught glimpses of the wild and desolate 
scenery about me. The great brown hills seemed 
to me, not only utterly denuded, but flayed, stripped 
of all the outer covering of nature, and gashed and 
scarred and marred and maltreated in every way. 
But in happier days succeeding, these same bleak 
hills grew to have for me a sort of grim grandeur 
and savage attractiveness. Moonlight, from some 
atmospheric peculiarity of the region, perhaps, gives 
to them a strange, mystical, unreal beauty, and a 
sunset glorifies them wonderfully, but it takes a 
great sunset to do it. 

My sole amusement during that first dreary day 
was in gazing out upon the street. Here I saw 
more Chinese than I had before beheld, and more 
Indians. The latter, I am happy to say, are to a 
considerable degree accepting the situation, and 
becoming civilized and Christianized. When sorely 
pinched the noble red man will bow his proud neck 



176 NEVADA. 



over the saw-horse to earn his daily tobacco and 
v^hiskey, and allow his squaw to earn their bread 
and potatoes by washing. When night came, " I 
was darkly, deeply, desperately blue." I had as yet 
no reply to my letters of introduction. I had seen 
no friendly, familiar face. My sole society had been 
a fellow-traveller in reduced circumstances and de- 
pressed spirits, — an Hungarian lady of rank. It is 
a singular circumstance that all the Hungarians I 
have ever known have been people of rank. A 
pretty nurse-girl and an elderly colored waiter, see- 
ing my low state of spirits, essayed to comfort me. 
She first advised me to go " to see the cannibals," 
some Fiji-Islanders, exhibiting in the town. "They 
say," she said, " that the old chief will bring out 
the leg of a man and eat it before the audience ; 
and that the princess will eat a whole baby, all 
by herself" 

When I expressed incredulity, her ingenuous coun- 
tenance fell. " I thought, if they would do all that, 
they would be worth seeing," she coolly said, though 
giving at the same moment a loving hug to the 
fair, fat baby she held in her arms. 

Jem, the waiter, asked if I contemplated a long 
visit to Virginia. 



TRANQUILITY AGAIN. 177 

" No," I growled out, " I shall start to-morrow 
for a civilized country, — shaking the dust of Ne- 
vada from my feet, if that be possible." 

He looked hurt, and eagerly answered, *' Why, 
we are civilized, madam ; we 've got a good vigi- 
lance committee here now. The time was when 
you could n't go out of a morning without stumb- 
ling over a dead man or two." 

Tranquillized in spirit, I reposed that night under 
the protecting wing of the vigilance committee, 
which is supposed never to slumber or sleep. Joy 
came in the morning in the handsome and hearty 
shape of the superintendent of the Chollar-Potosi 
Mine, who took me home to his beautiful house 
and his lovely wife. The storm was over, and 
thenceforth all was brightness and pleasantness for 
me in Nevada. So pleasant was it, so hospitable 
and social were the people, so much was there to 
see, that I absolutely found no time during my too 
brief stay to chronicle incidents and impressions, 
and I am now almost ashamed to dismiss so de- 
lightful an episode of travel in a few brief, dry 
paragraphs, as I find I must do. 

My kind host, Mr. Rigua, did the honors of the 
8* L 



178 NEVADA. 



Chollar-Potosi. We descended into those myste- 
rious argentiferous deeps, by means of the " cage," 
a sort of iron elevator, very safe and comfortable. 
The like of this admirable machine I did not see 
in Colorado. There you have to go down in a 
bucket, v^rith the chance of kicking it on the way. 
This is cleanly and swift and silent. If you want 
to visit the fourteen-hundred-feet level, you step 
on a little platform, settle, and are there. We went 
down several miles, and walked several hundred 
feet under ground, or went down several hun- 
dred feet and walked several miles, I am not clear 
which ; but I know it was a very interesting, easy, 
and instructive expedition, pleasanter than a walk 
through the musty and mortuary old catacombs, 
which always seemed to me to smell stiflingly of 
dead Christians. We visited several levels, explored 
tunnels and drifts, and saw all the various pro- 
cesses of mining, most of which were already fa- 
miliar to me. The ground I found mostly very 
dry, and the tunnels and drifts no more difficult 
to explore than the galleries of those same old cata- 
combs, which they more than once reminded me 
of. Some very rich deposits of ore have lately 



THE CHOLLAR-POTOSI. 179 

been discovered in this mine, lying solitary and 
alone in the form of monstrous eggs (roc's eggs), 
which are very cunningly hid away, and only come 
upon by accident. The miners get as excited as 
boys in egg-hunting, and have as little scruple 
about robbing the nest. 

The Chollar is not now worked at its lowest 
level, some eleven hundred feet down. The lode 
is not generally found to increase in richness as 
it descends, though the Belcher and the Crown 
Point have produced very rich ore at a very low 
depth. The mines on the Comstock Lode alone 
have produced an astonishing amount of bullion 
during the past year, and the talk is constantly of 
new discoveries. The old mountain is not yet half 
disembowelled. 

To the superintendent of the Sutro Tunnel I 
was indebted for a visit to that famous work, and 
a most charming day. We drove down Six-Mile 
Canon, a most interesting drive, -as it takes you 
past many of the great crushing-mills and the 
sluices, reservoirs, and buildings for the saving and 
working over of the tailings, — fine, clay-colored 
dust, formerly thrown away as mere refuse, but 



l8o NEVADA. 



now found to contain enough gold and silver- to 
pay handsomely. It is the last gleaning of the 
golden crops up above. Millions of dollars have 
drifted down these gulches in ''tailings." 

The valley of the Carson, from which the Sutro 
Tunnel leads into the mountain, is very lovely, but 
lonely and bare. If the great tunnel be ever com- 
pleted, and prove the success its projectors hope it 
to be, Virginia City, already wearing an ancient 
and permanent aspect, must be virtually trans- 
ported thither, the tunnel becoming the principal 
outlet of the mines. But it will be a great under- 
taking, even for the energetic and enthusiastic 
Teutonic engineer, to bring a mountain town like 
that to the plain without the aid of an avalanche. 
I have always had a strong interest in the Sutro 
Tunnel enterprise. I liked the boldness and the 
daring of it. I was impressed by the splendid pos- 
sibilities. It would be stealing a march on old 
Mercury, — storming his great treasure-house by 
sapping and mining from below. It was some- 
thing stupendous, yet practicable and feasible, — on 
the chart at least. On the spot, I more fully real- 
ized the stupendousness of the undertaking. So 



THE SUTRO TUNNEL. 



little has yet been done, such an immensity re- 
mains to be undone ! We went in, about half a 
mile, to where the men were slowly blasting their 
way through the hardest sort of granite. 

Though Mr. Sutro is a man of wonderful ener- 
gy and perseverance and persuasiveness, — though 
he has faith that almost may remove mountains, — 
I cannot beheve that the remaining seven and a 
half miles of tunnelling will ever be accomplished 
without strong aid and comfort from govern- 
ment. Sutro proposes, — Congress disposes. I 
suppose the Commission will report during the 
coming session, and the momentous question of 
subsidy or no subsidy will be decided. Prepos- 
sessed in favor of the enterprise though I was, on 
going to Nevada, candor compels me to state that 
I found almost everywhere, among mine and mill 
owners, superintendents and business men gener- 
ally, a strong and bitter opposition to the work. It 
is claimed by its able advocates that it will be a 
blessing to all eventually. But "all" decline to be 
blessed. They rebel against the grants, against the 
royalty, against the tolls, — against the whole "big 
job." They see, or will acknowledge, no advantages 



l82 NEVADA. 



in it, direct or incidental. They say that the pros- 
pects held out of rich discoveries along the route 
of the tunnel are "such stuff as dreams are made 
of" 

Of course, this is a question which only actual 
exploration can decide ; they may be all mistaken, 
— blinded by prejudice; and I confess that, if it 
could be done without injustice or loss to the men 
who have done so much to develop the resources 
of Nevada, who have labored so heroically against 
adverse conditions, through long years of doubtful 
fortunes, I should like to see the work carried 
through. Let the innermost mystery in the heart 
of the old mountain be got at, the long dispute be 
ended, and the greatest mining problem of the age 
be solved. Then, when the sullen old mountain, 
thoroughly brought to bay, is compelled to dis- 
gorge his treasure by thousands of tons, and to 
bleed gold and silver through countless newly dis- 
covered veins and arteries, I doubt not that the 
faithless and unbeheving will give in, and consent 
to be made rich ; that even the Bank of Califor- 
nia will gracefully accept the situation and the 
bullion. My day at the tunnel and at Dayton, a 



CARSON. 183 



pretty little valley town, was full of enjoyment, 
owing in great part to the cordial hospitality of 
my host and his pleasant family. We drove home 
through Gold Canon and by Silver City and Gold 
Hill, — all wonderful scenes of bold enterprise and 
busy industry, full of interest for me. On the fol- 
lowing day we went to Carson by probably the 
crookedest railroad in the world, — a marvellous, 
almost inconceivable, piece of engineering. 

Carson is the home of our genial and eloquent 
friend. Senator Nye. I was most graciously and 
charmingly entertained by his friends and neigh- 
bors, whom I found, without an exception, admirers 
and lovers of the man. 

Carson has some wonderful hot springs, which 
supply baths said to be excellent for rheumatism. 
Hot springs abound in Nevada. I heard of a 
family who do all their cooking by means of a do- 
mesticated geyser in their kitchen. The water of 
a hot spring near Elko has a decided taste of 
chicken-broth. What a pity it is not located in 
Chicago ! 

Of course, I visited the penitentiary to see the 
scene of the late terrible fight between the escap- 



184 NEVADA. 



ing convicts and the officers. The marks of the 
conflict are yet to be seen on walls and doors. 
Most of the men have been caught, and after their 
fearful hardships seem glad to get back. Many of 
them will not go out again, except for a little 
walk to the scaffold. While talking over the 
affair with the warden in one of the corridors, 
I was startled by hearing fearful groans almost 
under my feet. Looking down, I saw a small 
grating in the flag-stones, and was told that be- 
neath us were two dungeons, in which the worst 
recaptured convicts — murderers — were confined. 

Carson must be in the spring and summer a 
very pretty place ; for it has foliage and flowers 
and water, and grand hills behind it not yet 
stripped of all their trees. The society here is cul- 
tivated and agreeable, and the grace of a noble 
hospitality adds to it the last best charm. The 
Mint and the State Capitol are noble buildings, 
and there are several elegant private residences in 
the town. 

I have left myself no space fitly to describe the 
crowning pleasure of my little tour in Nevada, — 
the visit to Lake Tahoe. With a merry party of 



LAKE TAHOE. 185 



friends, in a large barouche drawn by four hand- 
some grays, I made the excursion with great com- 
fort, with unalloyed enjoyment, notwithstanding 
the lateness of the season, for the day was one of 
rare mildness and stillness, of perfect beauty. 
The road up the mountains, past Eagle and Car- 
son valleys, is a magnificent one, and commands 
magnificent views. It was comforting to see wood- 
ed hillsides again. All along our way the pines 
grow grand and tall, and there was something 
most "melancholy sweet" in the sound of the low 
winds among their dark branches. It took me 
back to the Alleghanies, the Green Mountains, 
the White Mountains, even the Alps, — so is that 
sombre music of the pines passed, from mountain- 
top to mountain-top, around the world. 

Tahoe is the most beautiful lake I have ever 
beheld. It is an emerald on the brow of the 
mountain. Marvellously clear and sparkling, it is 
surrounded by the most enchanting scenery, and is 
altogether a surprise, a wonder, a delight. Some 
time I hope to be able to describe it. I am vain 
enough to think I could do it ; for I have only to 
close my eyes, and the whole exquisite picture of 



l86 NEVADA. 



radiant skies and autumnal banks and purple moun- 
tains and soft green water glows and melts and 
shimmers before me. Ah, Nature was in a happy, 
tehder, divine mood when she formed Lake Tahoe 
and its exquisite surroundings ! And yet that 
sweet mood succeeded a passionate, fiery outburst, 
lasting nobody knows how many centuries ; for it 
is said by scientists that a volcano once seethed 
and rumbled where Tahoe now ripples and smiles. 
This lovely sheet of water was once named Lake 
Bigler, after a Democratic governor ; but a trium- 
phant Republicanism rechristened it Tahoe, — an 
improvement, perhaps, poetically, but politically a 
very small piece of business. There is an admirable 
hotel at the lake, and a small steamer for pleasure- 
excursions, a charming drive along its shores, and 
prime fishing in its cool, translucent waters. On 
the face of a high rock, in full view from the road 
and the lake, there is a singular natural curiosity. 
It is a profile, formed apparently by certain depres- 
sions in the stone, — a colossal intaglio, — and is a 
striking and a very noble likeness of Shakespeare. 
It is strange to think that Nature had chiselled his 
face in the eternal rock, high among the cliffs 



THE SHAKESPEARE PROFILE. 187 

where the eagles nested, in this savage mountain- 
land, at a time when the New World itself seemed 
but a monstrous mirage, or fata Morgana, afar 
down the watery slope of the world, — when not 
even the magic seas and the spacious heaven of 
his imagination took it in. 

I think Lake Tahoe must yet become a great 
pleasure resort. I have seen no more charming 
spot in all my tours for a summer's rest and ram- 
bling. 



CALIFORNIA. 



San Francisco, November lo. 

I LEFT Nevada, even for California, with re- 
luctance. I parted from the kind Nevada 
people with grateful regret. Even Virginia City 
looked not unlovely as I gazed my last upon it, 
trying to make out the dear home of the best 
friends a poor strolling Bohemienne ever had. 
The recumbent old mountain lay still and long and 
grand, like dead Caesar, his gaping, unsightly 
wounds decently covered by a light toga of snow. 

My journey of the next day, the last of my 
long pilgrimage from ocean to ocean, was a suc- 
cession of delightful sights and sensations. After 
crossing the Sierras, where the envious snow- 
sheds shut out from us many grand pictures, 
how wonderful it was to see the world brighten- 
ing and greening and blooming before us, as we 
slid down from that dark mountain - land and a 



SAN FRANCISCO FROM THE BAY. 189 

wintry atmosphere, into lovely, fruitful valleys, into 
soft, balmy, golden airs, past vineyards and or- 
chards and flowery gardens ! It was almost like 
witnessing a creation. 

I thought the scenery of the Sierras far behind 
that of the Rocky Mountains in grandeur till we 
came to Cape Horn, which is equal to the Ar- 
gentine Pass of Colorado, but no grander, I think. 

California all the way that day reminded me 
of Italy, as I once travelled through it at pre- 
cisely the same season ; and San Francisco, as 
seen from the bay (for we took the steamboat 
at Vallejo), reminded me of Genoa, which long ago 
I entered from the sea, at the same time of the 
year, and at the same time of night. The twink- 
ling, throbbing lights of the streets, and of thou- 
sands on thousands of dwellings, rising tier above 
tier, gave to the town a marvellous, magical ap- 
pearance. It seemed like a mighty flight of 
illuminated steps, leading up to the clouds, or 
like a city being let down from heaven. The 
air of enchantment, the aerial, unreal effects of 
that wondrous night-picture, I despair of convey- 
ing by any words I can command. It was a 



190 CALIFORNIA. 



clear, starlit night ; but the bold, rocky eminences 
to our right — Angel Island and Alcatras — 
lay wrapped in mysterious shadows ; and dimly 
through the Golden Gate shone the silver wa- 
ters of the vast, unknown sea, the ocean of my 
dream. I thought of old Balboa, beholding for 
the first time the gleam of those waters, — the 
solemn fulfilment of his prophecy, the fruition of 
his heroic faith. I thought of how 

*' Silent on a peak in Darien, 
He stared at the Pacific," 

and concluded that he did the correct thing in 
refraining from wrenching himself in attempts to 
express the inexpressible. 

December i. 
Three weeks and more in San Francisco and 
vicinity ; and they have gone by like three days 
and less. I have been a very bad correspondent 
during this time of times. All things without 
and within seem to have been in league against 
my virtuous plans for work, — the strange scenes, 
the bright sky and sea, sunshine and soft airs, 
novel street sights, charming drives and walks, 



FAIR WEATHER. 



191 



brilliant shops, theatres, libraries, churches, and, 

above all, the great^ hearts of these people, — 

hearts that keep open house for all visitors, and 
take us in, and wrap us around and hold us 
fast by the kindest, warmest, cheeriest hospitali- 
ty, — a hospitality which, like the mercy of the 
Lord, is "new every morning." Who could sit 
tamely down to write in such incomparably and 
intoxicatingly lovely weather as we had for the 
first two weeks of my stay ? And when the rains 
came on, — the first since May, — and it was really 
chilly and dismal for three whole days, who would 
write then ? What sensible Christian woman 
would n t curl up on a sofa and read novels ? 
Now all is bright and balmy again ; the waters 
of the bay sparkle with almost intolerable bright- 
ness, and the gardens and grounds have put on 
new greenness and glory. The garden under my 
window (my window which stands open) sends up 
the fragrance of heliotropes, mignonettes, gerani- 
ums, carnations, verbenas, and magnificent roses 
of many sorts. Fuchsias are in full bloom, and 
oleanders, and the bounteous laurustinas, and a 
sort of honeysuckle, and sweet-peas, and tube- 



192 CALIFORNIA. 



roses. So much for my dear flower-loving friends 
on the other side, by way of aggravation. 

The house at which I am now perched, the 
home of a lovely "friend of my better days," — 
if I ever had any, — is on the heights ; and the 
windows command wide views of the city, of the 
purple-misted foot-hills of the Coast Range, and 
of the bay and its islands. What with the near 
garden and the distant hills and waters, I have 
too much to look at, altogether. Indolence is no 
name for the feeling that takes possession of me 
here. There is nothing of the Italian dolce far 
niente about it. On the contrary, it is perpetual 
excitement, and prompts to supernatural bodily 
activity. There is "a spirit in my feet" that 
will not let me rest. I cannot see enough of 
this picturesque land. I cannot drink in enough 
of the quickening sunshine, and the balmy, heal- 
ing air of this strange new summer, of this 
vast new sea. The very springs of life seem re- 
newed here. Old enthusiasms, old pleasures, come 
back ; old follies put off their sackcloth and 
shake off their ashes, and wear somewhat of 
their first perilous attractiveness. Seeing "wild 



CLIMATIC INTOXICATION. I93 

oats " on every side, even I might be in clanger 
of going into the culture of that most unprofit- 
able cereal in a small way, — might, in fact, be- 
lieve myself young again, to all intents and pur- 
poses, — were it not with me as with the worthy 
old Yankee who was inclined to consider himself 
a handsome man : " Unfortunately," he said, " pub- 
lic opinion is agin me on that pint." 

This bright, balmy weather gives one from the 
other side a strange, bewildered feeling, — an im- 
pression of something unnatural and almost in- 
credible ; of a small Rip Van Winkle experience ; 
of having slept through the proper season of 
storms and snows, and bitter, biting winds, and 
>of coming out on the world on a radiant May 
morning ; for, look at the skies, so soft and 
blue, and innocent looking, and you half suspect 
some trick of celestial magic, and ask, * Where 
have you hidden away the winter ? " It is a 
country which one must get used to by degrees. 
It does n't go by the almanac ; its storms of 
wind and rain are done by big contracts ; its 
" hired girls " are Chinamen ; its theatres run on 
Sunday ; and it knows not pennies and greenbacks. 
9 



194 CALIFORNIA. 



It is odd, by the way, to see with what cool, not 
to say contemptuous, indifference people here re- 
gard our pretty pieces of postal currency. Even 
the vignettes have little charm for them. They 
gaze unmoved on the leonine head of Stanton, 
on the patrician face of Fessenden, on the fine 
figure of Chase, with folded arms, awaiting the 
Presidency; on the engaging face of Spinner, — 
even on that brilliant accomplishment, his signa- 
ture, and on the flourish, which is in itself a 
liberal education. It all comes from the influence 
of that magnificent monopoly, the Bank of Cali- 
fornia. This, by the way, was the first San 
Francisco institution I visited. Here I found my 
letters awaiting me, and here I saw more gold 
and silver coin and bullion than I ever before 
beheld at one time. Of course, I gazed upon 
them with the calm curiosity of a virtuous soul, 
rooted and grounded in the tenth commandment ; 
but I can scarcely conceive of torture more se- 
vere than that of a defunct Tweed or Connolly 
wandering about these vaults o' nights, with 
ghostly hands and diaphanous pockets. This 
Bank of California is certainly one of the most 



THE BANK OF CALIFORNIA. I95 

marvellous growths of this marvellous New 
World, and, doubtless, is a stupendous power on 
the whole Pacific coast. Its officers are distin- 
guished for their uniform courtesy and munificent 
hospitality. I am indebted to them for much 
kindness and many good offices, which I can 
never pay back, even at simple interest. To the 
account of Mr. Ralston and Mr. Franklin I place 
some of the rarest and brightest of my long 
succession of pleasant experiences out here. The 
first was a drive to the Cliff House and the 
Seal Rocks, a famous resort some six miles from 
town. 

The day was exceptionally clear and beautiful, 
even for this coast, where " they make 'em." The 
earth looked a little brown and dusty ; but sky and 
sea and air were full of soft, heavenly splendors, 
warmth, and serenity. We drove through some of 
the finest streets of the pleasant, festive-looking city, 
the roses of a thousand gardens nodding to us 
as we passed, and out over the sandy hills, and 
by green little nooks, market-gardens, and grain- 
fields. I cannot tell how joyous and friendly looked 
to me the whole strange landscape, after the bleak 



196 CALIFORNIA. 



hills of Nevada, where Nature frowns grimly over 
her rough treasure-chests, like an unprotected female 
at a San Francisco landing, standing guard over 
her " effects " against a mob of cab-drivers. Even 
the cemeteries on our route wore a cheerful, well- 
to-do aspect ; and the monuments of men who have 
had much to do with the history and fame of the 
State — of such men as Baker and Broderick — 
cast but a little shadow on the sunny day. Now 
and then, on the road, there were little, silvery 
glimpses of the Pacific ; but it was, after all, quite 
suddenly and with a keen thrill of surprise that I 
caught my first full view of it, lying almost at our 
feet, — immense but not awful, majestic but passing 
beautiful, smiling grandly under the sweet heavens, 
in its wondrous peace. It did not beat upon the 
sands like the gray Atlantic, in a sullen, thwarted 
way, but seemed to feel them gently, and to spare 
them, in a benign and sovereign self-restraint, call- 
ing in its forces, and lying back from the land. It 
appears older than the Atlantic, which somehow 
seems to date from the time of the Pilgrim Fathers, 
or of Columbus at the furthest. It murmurs of 
the most ancient mysteries of the East. Its very 



CLIFF HOUSE AND THE SEA-LIONS. 197 

air smells of Cathay and tastes of old Ci- 
pango. 

Cliff House has a long, broad veranda, facing 
the sea, and commanding fine views of the Golden 
Gate, of the dark, bold bluff of the peninsula, and 
of the rocky points beyond the curving beach. On 
this morning there were many sails in sight, some 
passing through the grand gateway, some coming 
up slowly before the soft wind, some melting into 
dreams of ships down the misty horizon. 

The Seal Rocks — three sharp, picturesque little 
islands immediately in front of the hotel — were 
crowded with sea-lions, whose strange, dismal, dis- 
cordant barking filled the air. These particular sea- 
lions are under the protection of the law, and are 
such old customers that habitues at the Cliff House 
are able to single out the leaders, the soUd citizens, 
and have given them distinctive and distinguished 
names. I must confess I watched them with an 
eager, childish interest and enjoyment. An Eng- 
lish tourist at my side remarked with a happy 
command of words, " What an extraordinary sight ! 
Really, you know, I had no idea of it ! What ex- 
traordinary creatures ! and what an extraordinary 



198 CALIFORNIA. 



noise they make!" — which are my opinions, better 
expressed. 

Some of these sea-lions are monsters of their 
kind, weighing a thousand or twelve hundred 
pounds, they say. All seals, queer, grotesque, un- 
canny creatures, have for me a strange fascination, 
seeming like sinful human souls in mild torment, 
— men, perhaps, who have warred and wasted, and 
lived free and high and fast, going through an un- 
comfortable metempsychosis, prisoned and pinioned 
in these flabby, slippery, and clumsy forms. As 
you first see those on this coast, they seem con- 
tinually to be flopping over the rocks or down into 
the water, and you say to yourself, '' What a dreary 
thing it must be, — an existence of flop!" But as 
you watch them further, you see that even a sea- 
lion's life is varied ; for there is the wallow in the 
water, and the hitch up on to the rocks, the siesta 
in the sun, and the bark. When he is awake, that 
is incessant. Day and night his "bark is on the sea." 
Sometimes, when they are all barking at once, it 
pleasantly reminds one of the House of Represent- 
atives. Doubtless the sea-lion has his marital re- 
lations ; perhaps the plural style of marriage pre- 



A SEAL PRIZE RING. I99 

vails in this thriving community, and all the 
middling-sized monsters grouped around the big 
ones are their consorts, — " sealed " to them. If 
so, the ill-adjustment and discontent which nowa- 
days seem almost inseparable from the blessed 
estate of wedlock may account for some of the 
little unpleasantnesses observable on the rocks in 
the mildest and sleepiest times. Another reason 
why not here, more than in Congress, do we find 
peace and unity, is, perhaps, that here also they 
have a Sumner and a Ben Butler. Another big 
seal has been dubbed by some patriotic visitor 
General Grant. This is a very quiet old fellow, 
and sleeps most of the time. He has a sullen, 
" deep-mouthed bay," yet I saw enough to be con- 
vinced that his bite is worse than his bark ; for 
while I was regarding him as he lay in profound 
slumber, an enormous seal hitched himself up out 
of the water near by, made a careful reconnoissance, 
and deliberately went for him. You should have 
seen the old Phocacean majestically rear himself on 
his flippers, should have heard his roar of angry 
defiance, which rang above the dash of the waves, 
and was echoed by every loyal seal on the rocks, 



200 CALIFORNIA. 



except, perhaps, " Sumner." Then began one of 
the most exciting contests I ever witnessed. It 
seemed to come off in " rounds," like a prize-fight, 
the first assailant continually getting the worst of 
it. When he was severely " punished " by the Gen- 
eral's tusks, he invariably fell back, and lifted up 
his voice and wept. At last, after half a dozen 
disastrous attacks, he fell so far back that he 
flopped off the rock into the water, where he laid 
his sore head on the bosom of the deep, and sub- 
sided. The victor gave one triumphant bark, 
turned over, and went to sleep. 

We had a sumptuous lunch, followed by the most 
invigorating, exhilarating, and altogether jolly beach- 
drive I have ever had to record, and I have en- 
joyed many an one during my weary earthly pil- 
grimage. Our drive back to town through the old 
Mission Dolores gave us charming views of the 
ocean, the country, and the city. On the whole, it 
was a day to be " marked by a white stone " ; but 
my stock of pebbles of that sort is giving out. 

From that noisy concourse of sea-lions and lion- 
esses to a gathering of the " best society " of San 
Francisco, from those gray rocks to elegant salons ^ 



PACIFIC SOCIETY. 201 

from no dress to full dress, from wild barking to 
classic music, from flopping to galoping, is a long 
step ; yet the next incident of note marked in my 
diary is a large party at the house of his Honor 
Mayor Selby. It was as brilliant and enjoyable an 
affair as the most cordial hospitality, the most 
'bounteous entertainment, fine music, flowers in 
marvellous abundance, splendid toilets, beauty, grace, 
and gayety could make it. San Francisco has, it 
seems to me, an uncommonly large proportion of 
beautiful women. I meet at every social gathering 
matrons of mature age and over, with fine, sym- 
metrical figures, and fresh, clear complexions ; and 
I see everywhere young girls that match the other- 
wise incomparable roses they tend on their lovely 
garden terraces. 

I have spent a couple of mornings in the Chi- 
nese quarter; I have stood hushed in the "dim re- 
ligious light" of the Chinese Temple, and snuffed 
the incense that floats about the shrine of Josh ; 
I have dissipated at the Chinese Theatre. But 
these are themes to be served up by themselves, 
and with more ceremony, I do not like to pass 
over in silence, yet I have left myself no space 
9* 



202 CALIFORNIA. 



worthily to recount, my next and most delightful 
experience, — a visit, with a party of dear old 
friends, to Glenwood, Mr. Ralston's place near Bel- 
mont, on the San Jose Road, with excursions to 
the fine country-seats in that vicinity. We were 
met at San Mateo, about six miles this side of 
Belmont, by Mr. Ralston's char-a-banc and four, 
and driven through the grounds of several noble 
residences, — grounds generously open to the pub- 
lic at all times. I have never seen anything in 
America so fine as some of the avenues and parks 
we drove through that golden afternoon. They 
have not the dainty neatness of Eastern parks and 
pleasure-grounds, but they are more picturesque by 
far. They are less prim than primitive. Nature 
has been respected as the great original landscape- 
gardener. These are grounds to satisfy the artist 
and delight the sportsman ; for wild vines and 
shrubs run and spread " at their own sweet will " ; 
the beautiful gray moss festoons the limbs of gnarly 
old oaks, and droops and trails with indescribable 
wild grace ; and fallen branches, and bushes, and 
ferns make admirable covers for game. 

Through paling sunset glories and freshening 



A SUBURBAN VILLA. 



203 



evening airs we drove up the Devil's Canon, in 
which is cunningly and cosily hidden away Mr. 
Ralston's charming villa, — the representative " open 
house " of California, the very temple of hospitality. 
It may be expected that I shall describe at some 
length a visit which was to me like a day in fairy- 
land, or a chapter out of Lothair ; but when I 
entered that house I left the reporter outside. 
The next day, after lunch, we had another drive 
along magnificent roads, and through a bewildering 
succession of stately avenues and noble parks, visit- 
ing vineyards and almond orchards and wonderful 
flower-gardens and palatial stables, strolling over 
lawns still marvellously green, rowing in miniature 
ponds, petting tame deer, — such lovely or lordly 
creatures ! — and inspecting beautiful blood-horses. 
" Beautiful ? Sir, you may say so ! " There was 
one gray, I remember, with a mane like the surf 
of the Pacific, and a tail like the Bridal Veil of 
the Yosemite. 

But the sun, that had shone all day long with 
almost midsummer warmth and splendor, dipped 
toward the waiting sea, casting back on the lovely 
coast hills a smile of tender reluctance. So we 



204 CALIFORNIA. 



went, — even more tenderly reluctant, — met the 
train at Menlo Park, and reached the city in the 
early evening, — like children tired out with pleas- 
ure. 

December 19. 

I do not much object to the steep hills of San 
Francisco when the weather is fair and I am not 
too tired. They give great picturesqueness and 
distinctiveness to the city, and a peculiar foreign 
aspect, reminding one of old Edinburgh or Genoa. 
The higher you go, the purer and drier is the air, 
and the finer the prospect. InvaUds should not 
remain down in the business part of the town, dur- 
ing the winter at least. This, I am told, is the 
most healthful and agreeable season for a sojourn 
in San Francisco. The cold winds which blow 
fiercely and continually through the mock summer 
are laid, and bright and balmy weather is, after the 
''big rain," the rule. Incredible as the stories of 
Munchausen seem the accounts which come to us 
of the heavy snows and intense cold on the other 
slope of the continent. 

The weather " sharps " of the signal service were 
true prophets ; for the great coast-storm is upon us. 



KILLING TIME. 



205 



It is something tremendous, stupendous ! We are 
shut in by a leaden wall of rain, — " corralled," or, 
to speak more poetically, "enclosed, in a tumultuous 
privacy of storm." So at last I get a chance to 
write. Duty is, at the best, a little dismal ; and I 
go to my work on this dark and tempestuous day 
in no hilarious mood. Yet everybody else is hav- 
ing a damp jubilee. Universal California rejoices 
in this flood as it never rejoiced in sunshine and 
soft airs. What wonders it will do for the crops, 
and what miracles for the gardens! 

A fortnight or so ago, I visited San Jos6, and 
had an odd little adventure. Ill luck attended that 
expedition from the beginning. A friend who was 
to have .accompanied me failed me at the last mo- 
ment. It was Saturday afternoon. I went to the 
station in good time for the 3.10 train to find that 
on that day it went at 2.10, was already gone, 
and I had more than two hours to wait for the 
last evening train. I walked the platform furiously / 
for half an hour, like a Beecher or a Dickinson ; \ 
then, seeing that " Woodward's Garden," a famous ) 
and a really interesting and beautiful pleasure re- 
sort, was near by, I went over there with mur- 



2o6 CALIFORNIA. 



derous intent against time. But can anything be 
more melancholy than such a compulsory " bender " ? 
Disappointed, vexed, tired, solitary, nothing moved 
me to wonder or admiration. I went into the 
tropical conservatory ; but saw nothing better than 
we have at Washington, and nothing new, except 
the " miracle flower," so called, named the Espiritu 
Sattctu, or Holy Ghost, — a little white blossom, 
which, to a devout imagination, bears some resem- 
blance to a dove with extended wings. I was dis- 
appointed in finding it so small, and said as much 
to the Irish gardener, who took fire (holy fire) at 
once, and indignantly asked if I had expected it 
to be " as big as a live pigeon." I meekly an- 
swered " No," but that the advertisement had led 
me to expect something like a good-sized squab. 
As I passed on, I have no doubt that man set 
me down as having committed the unpardonable 
sin. 

I did not linger in the art gallery ; for " art is 
long," especially the Greek Slave, "and time is 
fleeting." I went into the skating rink, and sat 
down in a festive crowd of my fellow-beings, who 
knew me not. I could have eaten peanuts with 



INCONSOLABLE ENNUI. 207 

perfect impunity. There was a " skatorial queen " 
and a " champion skater." But man on rollers de- 
lighted not me, nor woman neither. The champion 
imitated a drunken man to the life ; but even that 
failed to cheer me. A handsome trapeze performer 
leaped and plunged in mid-air, like a gigantic frog, 
in tinsel and tights ; and not a pulse thrilled with 
generous admiration or alarm. He performed, also, 
as a tumbler and contortionist; but the prospect of 
his tying himself in an acrobatic hard knot and 
being unable to untie himself was naught to me. 
I fear that if he had broken his neck in one of 
his compound somersaults, I should have regarded 
the catastrophe with something of the cool phi- 
losophy of Bridget in the kitchen, " Sure, thin, 
what 's one tumbler more nor less ? " 

After that exhibition I did not dare to visit 
the monkey department, for fear that it would be 
" borne in upon me " that Mr. Darwin's theory is 
true. I did not even visit the pet seals, lest I should 
wish myself one, with a nice little tank to disport 
in, and a comfortable rock to sleep on, instead of 
being obliged to flop over a continent, seeking rest 
and finding none. 



208 CALIFORNIA. 



On the train, at last, and away ! It was early 
twilight when we passed Millbrae and the magnifi- 
cent country-seat of Mr. Mills, the president of the 
Bank of California, and dusk when we went by 
Belmont. With the fall of night the wind rose. 
There was a full moon, but it pursued its credit- 
able career under difficulties, — now wading through 
drifting clouds, now quite hidden from view. I sat 
alone by a window, silent of course, looking out 
on the shadowy, flying landscape, and watching 
that determined and indomitable luminary, the only 
famiHar face in sight. I mused on the mysteries 
of creation, and studied out the trimming for a 
new gown. I yawned, I dozed, — the way seemed 
intolerably long. At last came the conductor for 
the tickets, and I asked, " How soon shall we reach 
San Jose } " 

" In about fifteen minutes, ma'am." 

I got together my traps ; then settled down 
against the window, took another lunar observation, 
and dozed, it seemed to me, full fifteen minutes. 
The train stopped. A family party near me rose 
and went out, and I rose and went out after them. 
By the way, the names of stations are not called 



LEFT OUT IN THE COLD. 209 

on these California railroads. People hereabouts 
are supposed to have cut their canines. I looked 
neither to the right nor the left, but walked for- 
ward to where I saw a light, to claim my baggage. 
Here I soon discovered that I was not at San 
Jose. The train was starting ; I started too, to 
jump aboard, but suddenly changed my mind. 
Five years ago I should have done it. Now I 
have outgtown such follies. I found myself left at 
a little way-station, several miles this side of San 
Jose, and with scarce a house in sight ! My emo- 
tions, when I saw that locomotive go snorting and 
prancing off, whisking his tail of cars, and when 
I looked around me, on the strange, lonely land- 
scape, can be slightly better imagined than de- 
scribed. I felt as felt my good friend " Sunset " 
Cox, when he was caught out in the Rocky Moun- 
tain storm, — I "wanted to go home." 

Then began a hurried and, on my part, an excit- 
ing dialogue with the station-master : — 

" Can I hire a carriage here } " 

" No, ma'am ; there 's no such thing to be had. 
I did have a buggy last year, but it 's broke." 

" What is the nearest town ahead ? " 

N 



2IO CALIFORNIA. 



"Santa Clara." 

"How far away?" 

" About four miles." 

*' Can't I telegraph to a hotel there for a car- 
riage to be sent here for me ? " 

" You might, ma'am, but the telegraph-opera- 
tor has took sick and gone home." 

" Well, what can I do ? I can't stay here all 
night." 

" Why, no, that 's so ! If you 're used to the 
saddle, I 've got a horse you can ride to some 
house hereabouts where you can get a vehicle 
of some sort." 

I assented gladly, and I flatter myself pluckily, 
to this vague proposition ; but that romantic 
horseback ride by moonlight was not to be. 
The travellers who had left the cars with me — 
a party consisting of a gentleman farmer, his 
wife and baby (which their name is Putnam) — 
had a carriage waiting for them. They saw my 
painful embarrassment. Putnam himself, with true 
Christian chivalry, refused to leave me there, or 
to consent to the proposed equestrian arrange- 
ment. In short, he invited me to go home with 



TAKEN IN AND DONE FOR. 211 

them, take supper, and then, if I could not 
spend the night, he said I should be sent over 
to San Jose. How pleasantly and gratefully I 
remember the hearty, manly way in which this 
" aid and comfort " was proffered. And yet he 
had no idea who I was ; to him I was only 
an unprotected and very stupid female in diffi- 
culties. In fact, I was ashamed to reveal myself. 
I accepted his kind offer ; I could not do other- 
wise ; but I felt inexpressibly mortified and as- 
tonished that I, old traveller as I am, could be 
capable of making a blunder so incredible. My 
new friend and helper tried to divert my thoughts, 
as we drove over to his place, by remarking on 
the moon and the ominous halo around it ; but 
I had done mooning enough in the cars. 
Before a pleasant wood-fire, in the parlor of a 
pretty farm-house, I at last made myself known, 
to find to my comfort that both my host and 
hostess were old friends, "according to the 
spirit." After this everything was lovely. We 
had a warm supper, and then the whole party 
of go^od Samaritans (barring the baby) went with 
me over to San Jos4 — a six-mile drive, half of 



212 CALIFORNIA. 



it leading under the grand arches of the Ala- 
meda, an avenue of oaks, willows, and sycamores, 
planted nearly a hundred years ago by the pa- 
dres of the old missions of Santa Clara and 
San Jose. The night was still a little wild, with 
cold winds and driving clouds. The shadows of 
the gnarly old trees had a weird effect, tossing 
and surging like spectral waves on the white 
sand of the lonely road, where nothing was 
heard but the quick fall of our horses' hoofs, 
the creak of swaying branches, and the rustle 
of drifting leaves. We reached San Jose at about 
ten o'clock, took leave of each other, and my 
adventure was over. Though the mishap was a 
little rough at the time, I would not lose the 
recollection of it for any entertainment my San 
Francisco friends can give me, and that is saying 
a great deal. It made me think better of human 
nature (not that I ever thought very ill of it), 
and love generous, hospitable Californians more 
than ever; and it took the conceit out of me 
as a strong-minded woman of the world, inde- 
pendent, and knowing a thing or two about 
traveling. Since that experience I am a sore 



SANTA CLARA. 213 



trial to conductors in my fear of getting some- 
where, or not getting somewhere, without know- 
ing it. 

I have tempted the gods by a second visit to 
San Jose and Santa Clara. There is an odor 
of defunct sanctity all over this region. San 
Jose is a beautiful city, with some pleasant drives 
beside the ever-charming Alameda, a noble new 
court-house, and several fine private residences. 
The show-place is General Negley's, and it is 
one which any prince might be proud of, and 
such as few princes deserve. At Santa Clara 
there is a large Jesuit college and an old adobe 
church. The latter is a dim, damp, musty, 
weather - stained, and earthquake - marred edifice, 
adorned with some curious, not to say grotesque, 
frescoes, painted, it is said^ long ago by a na- 
tive artist, an Indian convert. If so, "the last 
state of that man was worse than the first." 
One of the pictures on the wall — that of a 
saintly old monk in his cell — is so striking a 
likeness of the sagacious and loquacious states- 
man of Kentucky, Garret Davis, that one could 
almost believe it a portrait of that venerable 



214 CALIFORNIA. 



senator, doing penance for his sins of speech, 
or taking sanctuary here from the evil rule of 
Republicanism and the buffetings of Butler. 

We were very courteously shown all through 
the college, which seems an excellent institution, 
admirably practical in its character. The inner 
court, or garden, with its long piazzas, its aloes, 
myrtles, roses, and lemon, orange, almond, and 
olive trees, reminded me of the cloisters and 
court in the picturesque old inn of Amalfi, 
once a convent. The whole scene was marvel- 
ously like Italy, — the Jesuit priests, with their 
long black robes ; the quaint old church ; the 
older cross before it. Even the picturesque 
peasant figures were there, lounging about the 
church door, and kneeling before the shrine of 
the Virgin. Some swarthy Mexicanos looked the 
lazzaroni character to the life. But, thank Heav- 
en ! they did not beg, nor smell of garlic, like the 
genuine Neapolitan article ; and there were no 
snuffy, shuffling, shaven old mendicant friars to 
be seen. 

San Francisco has been having a sensation lately, 
which has shaken the many-hilled city like a mild 



A GLIMMER OF GHOSTS. 2l5 

earthquake. Ghost faces have appeared in divers 
window-panes about town ! The first spectre of 
this kind was discovered in the front window of a 
very respectable house occupied by a widow, who, 
it is said, recognized it as the apparition of her 
late husband. It caused a tremendous excitement. 
Jones, living, might have gazed out of that window, 
with that doleful expression (for it is a most in- 
felicitous-looking ghost) for every day of a long and 
virtuous life, and nobody would have heeded him ; 
but Jones, defunct, drew half the town to gape at 
him. Of course / went to see the crowd. That, by 
the way, was what everybody said they went to see. 
I found that the widow had been so beset by visitors 
and reporters that she had brought herself, for a 
consideration, to part a second time with her hus- 
band, — one gets used to these afflictions, — and 
that he had been removed to Woodward's Garden^ 
where he was drawing well. Scarcely was he gone 
when other ghosts appeared in neighboring win- 
dows, staring out of their crystalline limbo on a 
marvehng or mocking world, looking more or less 
miserable, as though in purgatorial panes. These 
new-comers I saw, and I must confess that they 



2l6 CALIFORNIA. 



were to me something quite inexplicable. They 
seem to have been done in, not on, the glass, and 
are scarcely of a character to serve any purpose 
of ornamental art. They are the very diaboUsm of 
photography. I cannot even guess at the process 
by which they are made to appear as and where 
they are. But ghost "sharps" tell me they are 
quite inferior to the original apparition now at the 
Garden. That, however, is said to be fading 
slowly away. Jones evidently does n't feel at home 
there. He was a family man. Bids are not lively 
for the other panes ; the spectre business has been 
overdone, and speculators are fearful of taking a 
glass too much. 

During the dismal deluge which came upon us 
in the holidays, I could not write, of course. I fled 
to Belmont, to the society of the beautiful and 
beloved Portia, who there presides, — to whom the 
wise men of the East and the princes of Cathay 
and Cipango pay homage. In those wide, hos- 
pitable halls I found gayety unclouded and bloom 
undrenched, — a clime and a climate of their own. 
There it was out of the question for me to shut 
myself up and work. I would be idle if I died for 



STORM AND SUNSHINE. 217 

it. Besides, it was so discouraging to hear of rail- 
roads and bridges washed away in every direc- 
tion, and mail-bags afloat. I half believed that, 
should I write my MS., I would have to bottle it 
up and let it drift. Then came the snow-block- 
ades, and the prospect of all mail matter en route 
being frozen up, not to be thawed out before 
spring. 

Since the storm, life in California has worn a 
particularly festive aspect. The hills have put on 
new coats of loveliest, liveliest green. In the gar- 
dens, the lilies and geraniums have taken heart of 
grace ; red and white roses have flung out fresh 
banners of bloom, as though ready to resume the 
old York and Lancaster strife. The beauty of 
these winter days — falsely so called — is inde- 
scribable. It is now, from morn to dewy eve, 
one steady tempest of sunshine, as a little while 
ago it was one steady storm of rain. Doubtless 
we shall have plenty of dark and rainy days yet 
this season, but the wettest of the wet must be 
past. I had before heard of " sheets of rain," but 
here it came down in blankets, — coverlets. There 
was not, it proved, a perfectly water-proof house in 
10 



2l8 CALIFORNIA. 



the city. You know all the Pacific coast Chris- 
tians had been petitioning and sacrificing for rain 
for some two years, so that there were long arrear- 
ages of prayers to be answered ; and it descended 
till every reasonable claim on the bounty of Provi- 
dence was liquidated. After the storm, came the 
Japanese Embassy, dropping down on " Frisco " as 
though out of another planet. They have all been 
very thoroughly lionized. The Prime Minister, 
Prince Iwakura, is irxiich commended for his " wise 
saws " and Oriental courtesy ; and the princesses 
brought over for their education are admired as 
remarkably modest and well-behaved young ladies. 
They are said to be impatient to don the Ameri- 
can dress, which they admire, " all but the hump 
on the back." 

Prince Iwakura gives it out as his opinion that 
women should Le educated equally with men. 
These heathens are getting on quite too fast. Let 
the American Board of Commissioners for For- 
eign Missions look to it, and send a fresh squad 
of missionaries to Japan. And let care be taken 
to select pious young men from Yale and Andover, 
— not from the women-invaded universities of 



LIGHT FROM THE ORIENT. 219 

Michigan and California. They may be martyred, 
these apostles of godly conservatism ; but they will 
die in a good cause. This pestilent woman ques- 
tion is traveling round the world in advance of 
the telegraph. I have a poetic friend in this city 
who is about to flee to a lonely island in the 
South Seas to get away from it. I tell him he 
flees in vain. The Robinson Crusoe of to-day 
finds on the rocks of his Juan Fernandez notices 
of Women's Rights Conventions pleasantly inter- 
mingled with advertisements of patent-right medi- 
cines. 

I have lately paid a visit to Sacramento, and 
seen the State Solons in council assembled, — a 
fine, live-looking set of men. The new Capitol is 
a noble building, bearing a striking resemblance to 
the dear old national Capitol we fondly remember 
as more symmetrical, if less magnificent, than the 
sacred conglomerate edifice we all at Washington 
turn our faces toward, at morning and evening 
devotions. 

I was charmingly entertained at the beautiful 
residence of ex-Governor Stanford, — gracious King 
Leland, — monarch of all the railroads he surveys ; 



220 CALIFORNIA. 



a man not only with a masterly brain for affairs, 
for the management of gigantic enterprises, for 
knowledge of men and means, but with a fair, lib- 
eral mind and a kindly heart, — a true representa- 
tive man for a grand State like California, almost 
an empire. 

The site of Sacramento is low and flat, and in 
some of the lower grade unpaved streets there 
were depths of mud apparently unfathomable ; but 
still we drove much about town and a mile or 
two into the country, our driver continually pick- 
ing the way. There are in Sacramento many 
elegant private residences, and it abounds and 
superabounds in shrubberies and flowers. 

With my ruling passion strong even in Califor- 
nia, I was not long in making affectionate inquiries 
of Governor Stanford in regard to his famous trot- 
ting horse Charley, or Occident, as he had been 
lately christened. In reply, my host offered to 
drive me out to the race-course where the animal 
is kept, that I might see fur myself; and the next 
morning I had the honor of a presentation to the 
most princely piece of horse-flesh I have seen for 
many a long day. Though not showy, and not, at 



A PRINCELY STEED. 221 



present, carefully kept up, he is really a grand 
creature, beautiful almost equally in action and re- 
pose, intelligent, gentle, tractable, yet full of joy- 
ous fire. I did not see him in harness, as the 
ground was too heavy to allow of his being put to 
his speed ; but a little son of the trainer mounted 
him bare-back, and let me see something of his ac- 
tion. The morning was beautiful, and he seemed 
to revel in the sunshine and fresh air, and to 
thrill with a fine ecstasy of life. The trainer 
of this horse is a Yankee of the Yanks, who 
devotes himself to his charge with the utmost en- 
thusiasm, and brings up his children in the same 
fealty. Every night he or one of his boys sleeps 
beside Royal Charley, ready to wake at his lightest 
whinny. In truth, the horse is far less an object 
of pride and solicitude to his owner than to his 
trainer. No railroads come in to rival, no steam- 
boats to run him down, in the loyal affections of 
"Yank Smith." He is jealous of his record to 
the fourth part of a second. 

Charley's pedigree has not been fully and accu- 
rately made out. He is supposed to be of Mor- 
gan stock, and was raised in the country, near 



222 CALIFORNIA. 



Sacramento. He passed into the possession of a 
man who worked him in drawing sand for the 
railroad, with a much larger horse, who was slow 
and did not do his share of the work; so finally 
his owner sold him to a butcher for seventy-five 
dollars, saying that he could get a horse for sixty 
dollars that would answer his purpose as well. 
The butcher sold him to a ranchman, who drove 
him in a market-wagon. A neighbor, a little wiser 
in horse-matters, bought him for two hundred and 
fifty dollars, gave him a little training, and sold 
him to Governor Stanford for four thousand five 
hundred dollars and a valuable horse named 
Grant. Since his wonderful speed has been ascer- 
tained, Governor Stanford has received immense 
offers for him. One demented admirer offered a 
ranch and seventy-five horses of good blood, for 
all of which possessions he would not take, he 
said, seventy-five thousand dollars. In refusing 
this handsome offer, the governor said he was re- 
minded of a story he read in his boyhood of an 
English highwayman (perhaps Dick Turpin), who 
once, when fleeing from the sheriff and hard 
pressed, caused his horse (perhaps Black Bess) to 



223 

take an astonishing leap over a chasm or stream, 
which feat a wonder-struck farmer, beholding, cried 
out, " I would give fifty bullocks for that horse ! " 
But the flying robber shouted back, " Fifty bul- 
locks couldn't take that leap!" 

Charley is now eight years old. He is fifteen 
and one half hands high, and, when in good con- 
dition for speed, weighs eight hundred and sixty 
pounds. He is in color a rich bay, which be- 
comes a dark brown in winter. 

The track of the Sacramento Trotting Park, 
though the best in the State, is not in a condition 
to make a perfect test of the speed of this re- 
markable horse. It is too fiat and sharp at the 
turns. The governor is having these defects rem- 
edied, so in a few months we may hear great 
things of this wonder of the West, and Dexter 
and Goldsmith Maid may have a rival in the 
future. The tests of speed thus far (though 
Smith declares that the horse has never yet put 
forth his best energies) have given this result. 
Ecco ! Best mile, 2. i8| ; best half-mile, 1.05; 
best quarter, 31 J seconds. Smith evidently believes 
his pet to be the fastest horse in the world. 



224 CALIFORNIA. 



"when his work is fairly cut out afore him"; and 
perhaps he is, as CaHfornia is undoubtedly the 
fastest country in the world. 

I made the journey down to San Francisco on 
a glorious afternoon. The country, such of it as 
was out of water, looked green with promise where 
the wild turf stretched away in mighty, magnificent 
undulations, and where ploughed lands awaited the 
planter and the sower. Ah, ' there 's richness ! ' " 

We have lately had an Artists' Reception, — 
a very gay and charming affair. All the beauty 
and fashion and celebrity of San Francisco were 
there, with several distinguished and many un- 
distinguished strangers, and, of course, all the 
editors and reporters and Bohemians. Bierstadt 
was there with his lovely wife. They have come 
here to winter, to be ready for another trium- 
phant art-campaign in the spring. Stoddard, the 
poet (he of the Pacific coast and strain), was 
there with his kindly, languid smile, — a young 
man whom everybody likes and calls " Charley " ; 
and Joaquin Miller, rough of dress, but mild 
of address, pale and pensive and peculiar, trying 
his best to look unconscious of the wistful gaze 



NOTABLE PEOPLE. 225 

of hundreds of bright eyes. Quite the opposite 
of this pale, wild Swinburne of the Sierras was 
the genial and fresh-hearted English gentleman 
and fine actor, Henry Edwards, with his won- 
derful atmosphere of joyous vitality, naturalness, 
and manliness. Everybody likes him too, and 
calls him " Harry," but no man has more the 
respect of the community. The stage, if it does 
not meet all his aspirations, has not destroyed 
them ; if it does not satisfy, it has not spoiled 
him. He devotes himself with singular enthusi- 
asm to natural science, and has one of the 
very finest private collections of butterflies and 
beetles in the world. A finished and conscien- 
tious artist, he yet makes his art almost second- 
ary to science. His theatrical tours are butterfly 
chases as well. By the way, we have had a little 
theatrical sensation here, — the appearance, for 
the first time in English, of Madam Veneta, a 
favorite German actress. I have seen her as 
Lady Macbeth, and that heart-rending Deborah. 
She is a woman of undeniable genius, some- 
what unequal in her acting, but, for the most 
part, playing with singular intensity and absorp- 
10* o 



226 CALIFORNIA. 



tion. She played poor, fiery, forsaken Deborah 
with truth and tenderness, with superb scorn and 
magnificent abandon. She is not very young ; 
she could hardly have united such concentration 
of passion and such self-mastery if she were. 
She is not decidedly beautiful, but her face has 
immense power of expression. She speaks Eng- 
lish remarkably well, with but a slight accent, 
and in a voice singularly like that of Charlotte 
Cushman, whose magnificently passionate acting she 
frequently reminds me of. 

Sacramento, March 4. 

All weather wiseacres unite in saying that 
there has never been a winter like this on the 
Pacific coast, for rain, since that of the great 
flood in 1862. I was just getting disheartened, 
had ceased my song of glorification, and was 
ready to sing, 

" I would not live alway, in California, 
Where storm after storm rises dark o'er the way," 

when the wind changed, chopped round to 
nor'-nor'west, and the sun came out in all his 
splendor and bravery, to open his spring cam- 
paign against flood and mud. 



STOCKTON MUD AND DARKNESS. 227 

Nothing could have been more dismal than 
my visit to Stockton. For most of the time the 
rain fell in torrents, and all the time the town 
seemed one vast slough. In early days Stockton 
was celebrated for depths of mud, not only un- 
fathomable, but unimaginable, and it has bravely 
held its own. By the way, it was the scene of 
the old legend of the miner's hat, seen one still, 
spring day mysteriously moving along the surface 
of the ground ; which hat was discovered to have 
a stranger under it ; which stranger, when extri- 
cated, shouted that he had "a mule down thar." 
I myself saw an enterprising lad, probably a 
news-boy, going about town on stilts. Fortunate- 
ly the sidewalks are high and dry above this 
black profound. 

They have in Stockt;pn an uncommon com- 
mon council for economy. They stoutly refuse 
to light the streets, though they have good gas- 
works, and though they have an excellent Mayor, 
of Boston stock, who wrestles with them on the 
light question continually. So, by night, when the 
heavens are unpropitious, all is Tartarean dark- 
ness, above and below. If nocturnally you would 



228 CALIFORNIA. 



" See fair Stockton aright, 
Go visit it by the pale moonlight." 

Stockton makes much of the moon. She has 
the great State Lunatic Asylum. The same 
economical city fathers who decline to light the 
streets, so that good people can attend lectures on 
dark nights with safety, actually levied on me a 
tax of five dollars for the blessed privilege of 
reading to a few citizens, who came out on that 
dark and doleful night with lanterns and um- 
brellas, a highly moral essay on " Heroism in 
Common Life," and never did people stand more 
in need of encouragement in well-doing. It was 
the first experience of the kind I ever had ; 
and I hope it will be the last, — for the good 
of my temper, which it would be a pity to have 
soured, at this late day. I resented it, as I 
always resent '' taxation without representation." 
If the town had been represented in proportion 
to its population — not counting the asylumites 
— at my moral and aesthetic entertainment, the 
thing would have been more endurable. 

Sacramento is always pleasant to me, mud or 
no mud, for its excellent society, for the cor- 



SACRAMENTO SOCIETY. 



229 



dial hearts and keen intellects I meet here, for 
the air of enterprise and activity which reminds 
one constantly of the good fight this people have 
made against adverse fortunes, against fire and 
flood. 

The house at which I am again entertained, 
though for the most part new and altogether mag- 
nificent, — the large house of a large man (in every 
sense), — is already pervaded by the true home 
atmosphere, suggestive of absolute ease and com- 
fort. There is no grand apartment too grand to 
be lived in and thoroughly enjoyed. None are- 
shut up for state occasions. No richest damask 
chairs are tabooed, or bagged in ghostly linen. The 
whole noble mansion seems to me a type of the 
generous, bounteous, almost prodigal hospitality of 
this country. 

Perhaps I may be pardoned for speaking more 
particularly of Sacramento society. Like that of 
all capitals, it is gay and fashionable; but I daily 
meet with evidences of a good deal besides, and 
better than gayety and fashion. The governor 
himself, Mr. Booth, is a man of quite extraordinary 
eloquence and culture, and several of the State 



230 CALIFORNIA. 



officers, men young or in their early prime, are 
rare scholars and gentlemen. I find Sacramento 
ladies very charming, with an unusual amount of 
vivacity, and a graceful and gracious friendliness 
of manner peculiarly pleasant to me as a stranger. 
The city wants sadly a good hall for lectures and 
concerts, and a museum of curiosities and art. The 
wealthy citizens show a good deal of taste for art, 
however, I have just returned from a visit to the 
house of Judge Crocker, who, at a time of life 
when most large capitalists hereabouts are utterly 
buried and absorbed in gigantic enterprises and 
splendid speculations, treated himself and family to 
a long stay in Europe, threw care to the winds, 
revelled in the beautiful, and bought pictures right 
and left. He has brought home a large collection, 
for which he is now building a fine gallery. 

Chico, March 7. 

I reached here last evening, so late that I 
could see but little of the town ; but this morn- 
ing I find myself amid the loveliest and most pic- 
turesque scenery I have seen since I first came 
into the State. Indeed, I believe this portion of 



MELANCHOLY MARYSVILLE. 231 

the great valley of the Sacramento is called "The 
Paradise of California." 

Marysville, in which for my sins of extravagant 
laudation of this country, perhaps, I spent a dis- 
mal, drizzling, lonely day, is a town of considerable 
importance, and has been in times past even more 
busy and prosperous. I should judge there was 
plenty of money there yet, from the number of cit- 
izens, who can afford to live without labor or 
any apparent business, whom we observed lounging 
about street-corners, or taking their otittm aim 
dignitate, if nothing stronger, in the bar-room of 
the hotel. Yet, apart from these elegant idlers 
and " bloated aristocrats," I suppose there may be 
a hard-working class of merchants and professional 
men, excellent people in their way ; and I doubt 
not that Marysville is the dearest and most desir- 
able spot on earth to all the inhabitants thereof 
I have one pleasant association with the place. I 
met there one friend, — a lovely, sympathetic Bos- 
ton woman, who brought to see me a beautiful 
little girl to whom she had given my name. 

Here I am, resting for a few days on the mag- 
nificent ranch of General Bidwell, a distinguished 



232 



CALIFORNIA. 



Californian, and one much respected, though he 
has been a member of Congress. He Hves here a 
Ufe busy, but tranquil, in authority almost feudal, 
in enjoyment almost Arcadian, on an estate of 
twenty thousand acres, comprising some of the fin- 
est wheat and fruit growing and pasture land in 
the State. The pleasant town of Chico, built on 
land which was once a part of this vast ranch, is 
named from a creek, the loveliest stream I have 
found in California. This runs the General's flour- 
mills, supplies all his irrigating ditches, and flows 
through his grounds. From the tower of his beau- 
tiful house, and even from my chamber windows, I 
can see far down the enchanting valley, on two 
sides, mountains lovely and grand ; the Marysville 
Buttes, the Coast Range, and the mighty Sierras 
blue in the distance, and wearing the same night- 
caps of snow they wore in the dark ages. Around 
the house are flowers, of course, and shrubs and 
trees just putting out their foliage, and a great 
variety of evergreens. Among them are the grace- 
ful Australian gum-tree, the Chinese camphor, and 
the pepper tree. On one side of the house there 
is an almond orchard in full bloom, looking like a 



AN ARCADIAN PICTURE. 233 

snow blockade. As I step out on the wide piazza, 
which almost surrounds the house, the serene, sur- 
passing beauty of the landscape takes my heart. 
The air is filled and thrilled with the songs of 
birds, — the robin, the thrush, the bluebird, and the 
incomparable meadow-lark, — and pulsates with the 
low, sweet gurgle of the stream, running crystal 
clear over shining pebbles. The whole landscape 
is peculiarly Italian in its character, and yester- 
day, at sunset, I saw a group of picturesquely 
dressed women coming from the mill. Large and 
straight, and free in their movements, they reminded 
me at once of Italian peasant women. Yet they 
are native Indians, commonly called Diggers. They 
are employed in the mill, and work well. They 
live in a little village, or rancheria, on the estate. 
General Bidwell gladly employs all, both men and 
women, who are able and willing to work, and sup- 
ports the old and infirm — some sixty of them — 
who were on the land when he came here. This 
morning we drove over a portion of the ranch, 
following, for the most part, a charming private 
road along the Chico. We passed immense fields 
of wheat, and a great meadow of the alfalfa, or 



234 CALIFORNIA. 



Chilian clover, which looked like a bright green 
sea, surging in the fresh morning wind. This clover, 
I am told, produces three bounteous crops a year, 
without irrigation, never losing its peculiar vivid 
green ; then, added to its other merits, it is sweet- 
scented. We drove over a rolling plain, starred 
with miniature daisies, dotted with buttercups and 
tiny blue flowers, strange to me, but something 
like our housatonias. But the flowers up here have 
not come out as they have down on the coast. 
Coming from Belmont, last week, I saw hosts of 
harebells and patches of wild iris, that looked as 
though the sky had come down in pieces ; while 
all along the side of the road ran the yellow Cali- 
fornia poppies, like a procession of fairy Orange- 
men. The grand floral spring flood is rising all 
over the State. Soon it will cover our feet, it 
will rise to our knees, it will touch our saddle- 
girths, and all the land will be drowned in bloom 
and fragrance. 

I am sorry I cannot see this charming Chico 
region in its full glory of blossom and foliage ; 
that I must leave before the trees. I want to be- 
hold these grand oaks in all their summer bravery. 



CHICO VEGETATION. 235 



Just now, all the greenery about them is the fatal 
garniture of the mistletoe, — that beautiful, inso- 
lent parasite, that seems to have come sailing 
through the air, out of the unknown, and boarded 
the tree of its choice, and flung out its pirate ban- 
ner from the topmost branches. Many of these 
trees are burdened with oak-balls, — a black and 
ghastly fruitage like unto baked " apples of Sodom." 
They are all the tenements and nurseries of para- 
sitic insects, and are formed from the sap, the life 
of the tree going out in these ugly excrescences. 
When the oak is stung, even to death, it sheds 
tears of sweet forgiveness, drops on the earth a 
white sugary substance, a sort of manna, which 
these wild Children of Israel, the Diggers, gather 
up in baskets, and eat almost as eagerly as they 
devour a grasshopper cake or an angle-worm stew. 
On our drive we saw away toward the mountains 
an indistinct, white, moving mass, which looked as 
though the fleecy clouds had settled on the plain. 
It was our host's little flock of five thousand sheep 
and fifteen hundred lambs. The stock I have not 
yet seen, but I suppose it is in keeping with the 
other belongings of this noble ranch. 



236 CALIFORNIA. 



General Bidwell has been on his land most 
of the time for thirty years. He has given 
much thought and study, as well as labor, to its 
cultivation ; for not even in bounteous California 
can such agricultural results be reached without 
good, earnest, hard work, intelligent observation, 
and watchful care. " While the husbandman 
sleeps," the Devil is ready to sow tares here, as 
elsewhere, and the way the pesky things grow 
in this region would have astonished the ranch- 
men " down in Judee." I could tell some stu- 
pendous stories of the productiveness of grain- 
fields, orchards, and vineyards on this ranch, 
but will forbear for fear I lose my reputation 
for veracity, — what may be left of it, after my 
reports from Colorado. All the "small fruits" grow 
here in great profusion and excellence. Among 
these must by no means be classed the cherries, 
— pride of the ranch ! He is set down as a 
greedy fellow, an unmannerly knave, who does 
not "make two bites of a cherry." All branch- 
es of the melon family flourish here immensely : 
in fact, all fruits not actually tropical, — pears, 
peaches, apricots, nectarines, quinces, apples, the 



A GRAND RANCH. 237 



fig and the pomegranate, the pomme d'amour, 
and the pomme de cJwil, and the pomme de terre ; 
and the best of it is, that no pestilent insect, 
unless it be a thieving Digger boy now and 
then, ever attacks any sort of fruit in this re- 
gion. Almonds are grown here of superior 
quality, especially the soft-shelled; also excellent 
English and black walnuts and olives. His 
fine grapes General Bidwell uses or sends to 
market in their natural, innocent form, being con- 
scientiously opposed to the manufacture of wine 
and brandy. 

I have been thus particular in describing this 
ranch, because it is, on the whole, the finest I 
have yet seen. Yet General Bidwell speaks of 
it ' habitually as a place of fine " capabilities." 
He has a thousand plans, partly originated by 
his accomplished wife, for improving it, in every 
direction and department. When they finish their 
great and delightful task, may I be here to see ! 

Sacramento, March 26. 
I have a new sensation to chronicle to-day, — 
an event which I hope will remain among the 



238 CALIFORNIA. 



experiences of my life, alone, apart, unique. One 
of the kind will do. Early this Tuesday morn- 
ing we had an earthquake, — the most severe 
earthquake ever known in Sacramento, which, in- 
deed, has hitherto been singularly exempt from 
such unwelcome visitations. It occurred — that is, 
the great shock — at twenty minutes past two, 
and then the clock stopped. It was late when 
I went to bed last night. I was tired and weak 
from recent illness, yet I could not sleep for a 
long time. I fancied the air was heavy and 
sultry. With a window wide open in my large 
chamber, I still had a strange feeling of op- 
pression and apprehension, though all without 
was profoundly quiet, — a dead stillness. After 
long tossing and weary waiting, I slept, it seemed 
but a little while. I dreamed I was at sea, 
and that the ship suddenly struck upon a rock, 
and shuddered and shivered and creaked fearful- 
ly. I woke to feel the rocking, straining motion 
of the ship, and the roar of the winds and 
waves. I had actually some moments of vague 
distress and terror before I realized where I was, 
and what was the strange tumult and shock, and 



EARTHQUAKE TERRORS. 239 

knew that the fearful power that was shaking 
the great soHd house, and rattling the windows, 
and swinging the chandeliers about me, was nei- 
ther of the air nor sea ; that the dull, appall- 
ing roar was neither the sound of a mighty, 
rushing wind, nor the voice of many waters, — 
though it was like to them both ; nor could it 
be taken for thunder, or the rumble of cars. 
It was something pecuUar, strange, terribly un- 
familiar, yet impossible to be mistaken, — a name- 
less horror of sound, muffled, portentous, and 
all-pervading. It did not seem to me to belong 
to the earthquake. It seemed in the air, not 
under the ground ; it was not the growl of im- 
prisoned thunder, but the ominous, defiant roar 
of some unknown element of death and de- 
struction, "flying all abroad." It was more terri- 
ble to me than the rocking and trembling all 
about me. 

What moments were those for swift, solemn, 
yearning thoughts ! Before I rose from the bed, 
which shook and seemed to surge under me, I 
seemed to pass in spirit over thousands of miles, 
and to stand by the bedside of my dear ones, 



24© CALIFORNIA. 



sleeping in peace, in security. Something gave 
me strength, and I rose quietly, went to a win- 
dow and looked out, expecting to see the ground 
heaving like the waves of the sea, and people 
running frantically from falling houses. But all 
seemed strangely still, except the swaying trees. 
Nothing was disturbed, and few people were then 
in the streets. It almost looked as though the 
earthquake were confined to this house, — con- 
tracted for, by the rampant enemies of the Cen- 
tral Pacific and its president. The moon shone 
through a mist with a peculiarly cold, almost 
ghastly light. This effect, I heard afterward, was 
noticed by others. I suppose it had no connec- 
tion with the earthquake, yet it increased the 
fantastic terror of the scene. My dear hostess 
came to me to try to give me aid, or rather 
comfort ; but as the shocks came in swift succes- 
sion, running into each other, she was herself 
almost overwhelmed with terror and apprehen- 
sion. Yet after her tender, unselfish way, she 
seemed to suffer most from fear for the fate of 
friends in San Francisco. " If it is so severe 
here, it must be terrible there^' she said ; and 



FINAL PULSATIONS. 24I 

my own distress was very great for many dear 
friends I pictured flying from their falling houses, 
and wandering through the streets. But, thank 
Heaven, they escaped the awful visitation this time, 
almost entirely. We seem to have taken the full 
brunt of it. We hear to-day that many people 
rushed from their beds into the streets and re- 
mained till the shocks were all past. My host, 
Governor Stanford, was perfectly calm, and his 
courage proved contagious. When he told me 
that it was not, after all, a first-class earthquake, 
I believed and trembled, respecting his long Pa- 
cific coast experience, and not being a judge of 
earthquakes myself When he assured me that 
the worst was over, I went quietly to bed, and 
there remained as quiet as my bed would allow 
me to be. The shocks became much less vio- 
lent and frequent, and at last were so gentle, 
that, worn out by strange emotions, and faint 
with a sort of sea -sickness, I said to the dear 
old earth I never had feared before, "Rock me 
to sleep, mother," — and she did it. At about 
six o'clock I was wakened by a smart shock, 
the last severe one we have had. During the 
II p 



242 CALIFORNIA. 



day we have had several starts and tremblementSy 
so slight that it is probable we should not have 
noticed them had we not been on the qui-vive. 
We are beginning to take some credit to our- 
selves for good behavior, as we hear of many in 
all parts of the city who were utterly panic- 
stricken, rushing into the streets in their night- 
clothes, shrieking and sobbing and praying, and 
doing other strange and unusual things. One 
frantic young man, very airily clad, leaped out 
of a third -story back window of a hotel. He 
alighted on the roof of an old shed, which gave 
way, and let him gently down into a spring 
wagon. So he escaped with his life, but has, 
they say, gone into retirement and a course of 
vinegar and brown paper. We felt assured that 
we were as safe where we were as we could be 
outside, and not a soul left the house. 

Buckle, I believe, says that there is nothing 
that so takes hold on the imagination as an 
earthquake ; and very likely my imagination exag- 
gerated the peril, the heaving, the roaring, as I 
afterward found it did the duration of the shocks. 
All the accounts I had ever heard or read of earth- 



THOUGHTS FROM THE IJEPTHS. 243 



quakes came back to me, — the dreadful stories 
of the destruction of Catania and Lisbon in the 
old school-books, with their more dreadful pic- 
tures, and the later horrors of South American 
convulsions. There is in an earthquake all the 
elements of panic, of wild, mad terror, especial- 
ly in its utter unexpectedness and uncertainty. 
Nothing in nature gives you warning that it 
is coming, nothing assurance that it is past. 
You cannot know during the first great shock 
whether it is subsiding or culminating. Still, we 
were more solemnized than terrified, at least af- 
ter the bewildered waking out of sleep, and the 
first surprise and alarm. There was something so 
mysterious, so stupendous, so almost grand in that 
shudder of the solid globe, — that nightmare of 
the sleeping earth, moaning and tossing under the 
still, bright heavens ! We were hushed and hum- 
bled ; with a sense of the most utter helpless- 
ness, we could but try to look beyond Nature to 
Nature's God, silently to appeal from her piti- 
lessness to His pity, from her restlessness to His 
rest. 

Now, in the brave light of day, we feel brave, 



244 CALIFORNIA. 



and wonder we were so awed and agitated, and 
laugh at stories of wild excitement and demor- 
alization in the hotels down -town ; yet it is 
strange how every little new tremor of the smil- 
ing earth gives one a sort of sickening electric 
shock, and seems in an instant to resolve one's 
heart into jelly. 

This morning, to brighten our thoughts and 
steady our nerves, we drove out to the Park, and 
went like the wind around the track, and saw the 
great Stanford trotting horse go like a whirlwind 
over ground which only six hours before, seen by 
the pale moonlight, would have seemed scarcely 
more substantial than the canvas waves of a the- 
atrical sea. 

Governor Stanford drove a pair of sorrels, very 
fast and very beautiful, and there were a number 
of fine horses on the track. But the observed of 
all observers was Charley, or Occident, who was 
taking his constitutional. He is now in splendid 
condition, and seems to strike fire from the ground, 
and to be charged with it, warming up grandly 
with every round. 

O, how pleasant and beautiful seemed the earth, 



AFTER THE STORM. 245 

in its fresh spring attire! how quiet, and inno- 
cent and reliable ! All along our way, going and 
returning, we breathed in the intoxicating sweet- 
ness of violets and roses and lilacs, and the more 
delicate fragrance of fruit-tree blossoms and tender 
young leaves. We had radiant sunshine instead of 
the misty moonlight, associated with tumult and 
terror; the song of birds in lieu of that sullen 
roar more appalling than the rush of a tornado or 
the thunder of surf; in short, we had brightness 
and peace instead of mystery and fear. It was 
paradise regained. 

Of course, we and our visitors talk earthquake 
continually. One friend, who had experienced much 
harder shocks, says he should not have left his bed 
last night if it had not gone down under him. 
Another friend has just been telHng me a curious 
earthquake story : A gentleman and his wife came 
to San Francisco in the fall of 1864, intending to 
make California their home. On the very night 
after their arrival there occurred a frightful earth- 
quake, which so shocked them that they took the 
very next steamer and returned to the Atlantic 
coast. After four years they were so far recovered 



246 CALIFORNIA. 



from their fright that they concluded to try it 
again. They came this time determined to stay. 
But, on their very first night in San Francisco, the 
earthquake found them out. It was the great earth- 
quake of October, 1868, that finally utterly routed 
them. They went home by the first train. They 
had seen Uttle in their two visits to California, but 
they had felt unutterable things. 

I hear with great regret that pleasant Chico 
has suffered some damage, and that the beautiful 
house in which I was most hospitably entertained 
has been seriously injured. I thank God that no 
lives have been lost ; and, on the whole, I am not 
sorry to have had the experience. I shall never 
now, like the boy in the quaint old German story, 
be discontented and unhappy because I do not 
•"understand what it is to shudder." 

San Francisco, May 4. 
Since the coming in of fine, clear weather, since 
the real royal entry of spring, the obstacles in the 
way of study or writing, both without and within, 
have seemed quite insurmountable. These glorious 
days have rolled in upon me in a perfectly whelm- 



THE DREAM OF A MAD FLORIST. 247 

ing tide of fragrant and golden enticements, 
floating me helplessly out into the lovely country, 
up and down the great highways, and over the 
bright waters, — to Sacramento, to Belmont, to 
Oakland and Brooklyn and Sancelito. Much of 
the time I have simply been flying like a shuttle- 
cock back and forth across the bay. I had a 
pass, and thought I must work it out. 

The grand California flower-show is at its height. 
Anything more gorgeously beautiful than the dis- 
play in meadows and wild pasture lands, on hill- 
side and river-side, it were impossible for any one 
but a mad florist to imagine. Along the railroads 
on either hand runs continuously the rich, radiant 
bloom. Your sight becomes pained, your very brain 
bewildered, by watching the galloping rainbow. 

There are great fields in which flowers of many 
sorts are mingled in a perfect carnival of color ; 
then come exclusive family gatherings, where the 
blues, the crimsons, or the purples have it all 
their own way ; and every now and then you come 
upon great tracts, resplendent with that most royally 
gorgeous of all wild flowers, the yellow or orange 
poppy, which an old Russian beav of a botanist 



248 CALIFORNIA. 



has Stretched on the rack of the name Eschscholtziay 
but which long ago some poetic Spaniard, not a 
" flower-sharp," and so not above taking a hint 
from nature, christened El-copo-d' oro. Every such 
tract where the sumptuous blossoms stand thick 
reminds one of the " field of the cloth of gold." 
They are peculiarly joyous-looking flowers, massed 
together, dancing and hobnobbing, and lifting their 
golden goblets to be filled by the morning sun. 
At night, emptied of that aureate air, the dainty 
cups close up, and the tipsy revellers go to sleep. 
Cool libations of watery moonshine are not to their 
taste. 

With the first dawn of spring I bravely under- 
took to gather and preserve specimens of every 
sort of wild flower in its season ; but I soon found 
it was a losing game for me. As I put down my 
specimens in my little herbarium. Nature would 
" see " me and " go " me five, ten, twenty, fifty 
" better," and, at last, " could give me a hundred, 
and beat me every time." 

Even Marysville and Stockton look bright, 
festive, and hospitable, with their spring suits on. 
I begin to repent me that I sufiered vile March 



THE DELIGHTS OF OAKLAND. 249 



weather and the uncommon wickedness of com- 
mon councilmen to color too darkly my impres- 
sions of those two boroughs. Peace be with them I 
Marysville, I am told, has some delightful society, 
and Stockton is only to be avoided by lecturers 
and lunatics. They fine the former and confine 
the latter. 

At my last visit, since the earthquake, I found 
Sacramento with her feet clean out of the mud, 
and sitting among the roses. It is really a beauti- 
ful season there now, and a peaceful and virtuous: 
The Legislature has adjourned. 

I heard while there another story of the earth- 
quake. A lodger at one of the hotels, when awa- 
kened on that memorable night, supposed that 
some mischievous or burglarious individual was 
heaving up his bed. Leaning over its edge and 
holding on with difficulty, he shouted, "Come out 
of there, you son of a gun ! " 

The idea of calling an earthquake a *' son of a 
gun " struck me as unspeakably droll. 

Oakland, the city over the bay, that ought to 
have been San Francisco, a heavenly spot, where 
the sand and the wind trouble not, and earthquakes 
II* 



250 CALIFORNIA. 



do not break through and shake, as here, is beau- 
tiful at all times and seasons, but is now enchanting. 
Such roses as grow there in marvellous variety and 
profusion are a foretaste of paradise. By the way, 
I do not believe that any writer has done full jus- 
tice to the roses of California in their loveliness, 
their bounteousness, their absolute perfection. They 
are the tenderest, the most aerial hues, the most 
transporting tints, of sunrise and sunset born again 
in bloom. Next to the roses in beauty are, to me, 
the scarlet geraniums, growing in great clumps and 
long hedges, blazing up out of the green, like flow- 
ering flame. Then there is the calla lily, fresh and 
cool and pure, growing also in wonderful profusion. 
In the decoration of one San Francisco church for 
Easter service more than a thousand lilies of this 
regal family were immolated. 

Sancelito is the most poetically and perennially 
attractive place of resort on the bay. Here grow 
wonderful ferns, here are cliffs and dells, and lovely 
little coves, and shadowy glens, and charming hid- 
den brooks. 

I really cannot see how this coast can ever make 
a great record in scientific discoveries and attain- 



INTELLECTUAL PROBABILITIES. 251 

ments, and the loftier walks of literature ; can ever 
raise great students, authors, and artists of its own. 
Leaving out of consideration the fast and furious 
rate of business enterprise, and the maelstrom-like 
force of the spirit of speculation, of gambling, on 
a mighty, magnificent sweep, I cannot see how, in 
a country so enticingly picturesque, where three 
hundred days out of every year invite you forth 
into the open air with bright beguilements and 
soft blandishments, any considerable number of 
sensible, healthy men and women can ever be 
brought to buckle down to study of the hardest, 
most persistent sort ; to " poring over miserable 
books " ; to brooding over theories and incubating 
inventions. California is not wanting in admirable 
educational enterprises, originated and engineered 
by able men and fine scholars ; and there is any 
amount of a certain sort of brain stimulus in the 
atmosphere. She will always produce brilliant men 
and women of society, wits, and ready speakers ; 
but I do not think she will ever be the rival of 
bleak little Massachusetts or stony old Connec- 
ticut in thorough culture, in the production of 
classical scholars, great jurists, theologians, his to- 



252 CALIFORNIA, 



rians, and reformers. The conditions of life are 
too easy. East winds, snows, and rocks are the 
grim allies of serious thought and plodding re- 
search, of tough brains and strong wills. 

There are great hopes entertained of the State 
University, now at Oakland, but to be, when its 
new buildings are completed, at Berkley, some four 
miles away, and in full sight of the Golden Gate. 
It is already a noble institution, with an admirable 
faculty. The Mills Seminary, a very large school 
for young ladies, admirably situated, hid away in a 
charming nook under the beautiful Brooklyn hills, 
is certainly something for California to be proud 
of I have found it a delightful place to visit. 
The handsome, neat, bright, and every way com- 
fortable house overflows with happy young life. 
In its atmosphere, as in a magic bath, I seemed 
for the time to renew my own youth, and to dwell 
again in the school-girls' Arcadia. The bright, 
blooming, eager, girlish faces I have seen there I 
shall long remember with tender interest. " O 
young and joyous creatures ! " shall I look upon 
you never again .<* 

Oakland society is more literary and artistic in 



SCRAPS OF TRAVEL. 253 

its tone than that of any other Pacific coast town. 
Still, I am told young Oakland dances and skates 
more than it studies or sketches. Every great en- 
tertainment winds up with a ball, every little one 
with a "hop," — unless it be a christening or a com- 
munion service. It is a merry people, and a kindly 
and a generous, responding liberally to every ap- 
peal of benevolence and good-fellowship. Such a 
succession of " benefits," charitable and compliment- 
ary, as we have had in this vicinity during the last 
two months, I have never known. Everybody that 
is deserving or unfortunate has a chance, sooner 
or later. 

Of the smaller towns I have visited, I think 
pleasant Chico the most intellectually inclined. I 
met there people of excellent literary taste. I must 
mention the postmaster as a man especially fond 
of letters. He kept a whole package of mine for 
nearly two days, refusing to give them up at my 
frantic call, and even denying that the documents 
were in his possession. I was told that this affec- 
tionate clinging to his mail-matter is an aesthetic 
weakness of the old gentleman's. By the way, in 
this same village I fell into the clutches of a hack- 



254 CALIFORNIA. 



man, who, for an hour's use of an indifferent old 
vehicle, smelling of damp strangers, extorted from 
me no less than eight dollars in gold and silver 
coin ; and it has occurred to me that it would be 
a good idea to station this same highwayman at 
the window of the post-office to call on the vener- 
able lover of letters to " stand and deliver ! " 

At Chico I met with a very interesting woman, 
the wife of General Cosby of Kentucky, during our 
" late unpleasantness," in the Confederate army, 
now very much reconstructed into a Butte County 
California ranchman. Mrs. Cosby, since living a 
life novel in its new cares and labors, but some- 
what lonely and monotonous, has developed re-- 
markable artistic talent, in brighter years undreamed 
of even by herself. She is a brave, cheery, ener- 
getic young wife and mother, full of freshness, en- 
thusiasm, and originality. It was actually by join- 
ing in, after her merry fashion, with her children's 
play one sunny day last winter, that she discovered 
her talent for sculpture. The little ones were man- 
ufacturing the immemorial mud-pie ; she took up 
a lump of adobe, and fashioned, not a pie, but a 
pretty little head. " The thing grew under my fin- 



ART AND LITERATURE. 255 

gers," she said. The finer touches of her play- 
work were done by a hair-pin. She did not know 
she had hit on Mr. Gibson's favorite Httle model- 
ling tool. Finding the adobe not very pliable, and 
having no other sort of clay to work with, — not 
knowing anything of the first processes of sculpt- 
ure, — she next cut an ideal head from a large 
piece of chalk, chiefly with an old pair of scissors. 
Next she purchased a block of marble, and, like a 
small female Buonarotti, grappled at once with the 
stone. Without a word of instruction, with no model 
or drawing, with no proper sculptor's implements, 
she has already chiselled a small ideal figure — 
" Mignon," I believe she calls it — and an admi- 
rable portrait bust. I have shown a photograph 
of the latter to several artists, and they have pro- 
nounced it, under the circumstances, a wonderful 
production. 

The literary publications of San Francisco seem 
to me, for the most part, singularly spirited and 
readable. We all know what the Overland is ; 
how rich in original, sparkling, dashing, and, withal, 
poetic contributors. It does not lose hope in losing 
Harte ; its " luck " did not all belong to the " Roar- 



256 CALIFORNIA, 



ing Camp " ; it can never be " dead broke " while 
Ina Coolbrith and Charles Warren Stoddard, and 
Hannah Neall, and Joaquin Miller remain to it. 

The Alta California, a pioneer journal, still holds 
its own, and is an agreeable old newsmonger, when 
it does not let its angry passions rise against 
woman suffrage, or render railing for railing, in 
a naughty way, against the Central Pacific. Just 
iiow it is n't exactly pleasant reading for me, be- 
cause of the hard things it says of my kind friend 
Governor Stanford, a gentleman of high moral char- 
acter, a good husband and father, but not inordi- 
nately " stuck up " by such distinctions ; rich, but 
not otherwise reprehensible ; fond of a fine horse, 
a good cigar, and his wife's relations ; but a man 
and a brother for all that. 

The Bulletin is bright, but decorous ; entertain- 
ing, but elegant, especially in its literary depart- 
ment, managed by an able editor long connected 
with that excellent daily, the Utica Herald. Mr. 
Williams is a journalist of rare taste and cul- 
ture, and helps to give to the Bulletin a certain 
Boston form and flavor very agreeable to New- 
Englanders. 



NEWSPAPERDOM. 257 

The Chronicle and Call are wide-awake, lively, 
and chatty morning visitors. The Chronicle is 
especially enterprising and ambitious in the inter- 
viewing and reporting line. It will interview any 
distinguished visitor short of an earthquake, 
twenty-four hours before his arrival. Its reports 
of the snow-blockade read like Abbott's account 
of Napoleon's Russian campaign, and its great 
woodcut of the Inyo earthquake was even more 
appalling than that catastrophe ; people were 
known to run out of their houses on behold- 
ing it. 

Among a host of other weeklies, religious and 
agricultural, " content to dwell in decencies for- 
ever," there is the famous and audacious News- 
Letter, — half jester and half bandit. It has, I 
hear, lately lost its wittiest and wickedest editor. 
When he flung dirt there was usually a little 
gold-dust mixed with it. The English he used 
was terrible, but it was English, — a pure article 
of venom. 

The city has several fine libraries, chief 
among them being the noble Mercantile. Though 
I cannot see how anybody finds any time to 

Q 



258 CALIFORNIA. 



read real books here, book establishments seem 
to flourish. Roman has a beautiful new store on 
Montgomery Street, and Bancroft Brothers have 
a magnificent building for both the sale and the 
printing of books, on Market Street. I was sur- 
prised by the elegance, extent, and completeness 
of their establishment. This house does not 
confine itself to modern publications. It shows 
some veneration for the past, — considerable anti- 
quarian research. I found on its shelves several 
of the works of *'G. G." They take them down 
and dust them carefully about once a year. Oth- 
erwise they are not disturbed. 

The drama flourishes in " Frisco," and the 
Gospel is not so much at a discount as they 
who beUeve the two institutions essentially and 
eternally inimical to each other would naturally 
expect. Theatrical people, if they behave them- 
selves, are held to be as good as stock-gamblers 
and claim-jumpers ; and yet popular preachers 
draw exceedingly well, especially when they hold 
forth in a popular place. Dr. A. L. Stone, the 
eloquent and elegant Congregational clergyman, 
has, all through the season, attracted without the 



THE PULPIT. 259 



aid of a band, every Sunday evening, large 
crowds to the Skating Rink, — the righteous sit- 
ting "in the quiet," decorous, devotional, and se- 
cure, on the very spot where, week-day evenings, 
the "wicked stand on slippery places." 

Dr. Horatio Stebbins, the prince of Unitarian 
sermonizers to my mind, brings together for ev- 
ery discourse a large, sympathetic audience of 
cultivated and thinking people. For grandeur of 
scope, for massiveness of construction, richness 
and power of language, profound philosophy and 
broad humanity, I have never known the equals 
of the magnificent religious essays produced 
Sunday after Sunday by this noble successor of 
Thomas Starr King. I shall pass out most re- 
luctantly from the large circle of eager hearts, 
kindling souls, and receptive, but not unquestion- 
ing minds to which he ministers, — first, as a 
man, of a somewhat rugged and unpliant type, 
brave, simple, direct, and independent ; next, 
as the teacher, deeply learned in the truths 
whereof he treats, and speaking by their author- 
ity ; and lastly, as the pastor not much con- 
cerned for the dignity of the character, not at 



26o CALIFORNIA. 



all presuming on its venerable associations, its 
sacred privileges, its social and political immuni- 
ties, evidently believing that his " high profession 
spiritual " is neither above nor apart from ear- 
nest practical life and Christian citizenship. 

May 21. 

I cannot too strongly impress upon the minds 
of tourists the necessity of guarding with the 
utmost vigilance against taking a San Francisco 
spring cold. It is, of all known catarrhs, the 
most obstinate, persistent, unconquerable, implaca- 
ble. " Physicians are in vain," medicaments pow- 
erless, mustard draughts and cephalic snuff, hot 
baths and old Bourbon, inoperative ; it will run 
its course, fierce and furious, to the end, leaving 
you as suddenly, perhaps, as it came ; and if it 
does not take you off with it, you find yourself 
very little the worse for wear, — the wear and 
tear of a cough which can only be compared 
with other monstrous California products. The 
air, at its harshest, is so pure and stimulating 
here, that you keep your strength and spirit and 
appetite in the midst of quite serious indisposi- 



SAN FRANCISCO CLIMATE. 261 

tion. You feel that you ought to give up and 
go under, but somehow you don't. There is no 
languor in the atmosphere ; it is veined with a 
vital electricity, and in it you react and recu- 
perate from any ordinary illness with marvellous 
rapidity. But it is far better not to be ill at all, 
even here ; and one could, I am convinced, es- 
cape colds by remembering that, however sunny 
and brilliant the day at this season, the biting 
northwest wind of the coast, if not prowling 
and howling through the streets, is, like the ene- 
my of the dog Diogenes, always waiting "round 
the corner." The only safe course is to make no 
change in one's dress, except it be to wear even 
warmer clothing than is needed in the mild, 
damp winter. Flannel — good, genuine, honest 
flannel — must be constantly worn, and furs are 
occasionally needed. But for all its bitter winds 
and sullen fog and blinding dust, San Francisco 
still looks pleasant and home -like to me when- 
ever I come back to the city, after a little ab- 
sence. Beneath the shifting sands I feel the 
abiding rock ; above the bluster I see the steady 
sunshine. She is a little fickle in her favor, but 



262 CALIFORNIA. 



firm in her friendship ; she is tempestuous and 
narrow in her local prejudices and animosities, 
but genial and broad in her hospitalities. 

I have just returned from what should have 
been a pleasure trip, but which was somewhat 
compulsory, on account of one of those fearful 
coughs I have attempted to describe, and which 
here would not depart from me. I went with a 
single, dear travelling companion, first to the 
White Sulphur Springs, the most fashionable 
watering-place on the coast. Our route was by- 
steamer to Vallejo, thence by rail to St. Helena, 
where we took stage for the Springs. The day 
was beautiful, almost as a matter of course, and 
the little voyage up the noble bay altogether 
delightful. I never weary of looking at the ever- 
varying shores of this most picturesque piece of 
water, and at the grand heights and soft curves 
of the Coast Range. Mounts Tamalpais and Di- 
abolo are kingly old fellows, and many of the 
hills are beautiful exceedingly, though now they 
have almost lost their lovely green tints and are 
fast assuming the dull, tawny hue which they 
wore when I first beheld them in October. These 



BRET HARTE. 



263 



changes about San Francisco are marvellously in- 
dicated by Bret Harte in his exquisite legend, 
" Concepcion de Arguello " in the May " Atlan- 
tic." The longer I remain here, the more I see 
that no writer, no painter even, has ever given 
the local coloring of these California scenes like 
Bret Harte. This strange, familiar, new, old, mo- 
notonously restless Californian life must have ab- 
sorbed, if it did not satisfy him. His genius 
was thoroughly immersed in it, even if it went 
down like an unwilling diver, and had httle de- 
light in the rough pearls it brought to the sur- 
face. The more I see of California scenery, life, 
and character, the more vividly I am impressed 
with Mr. Harte's power in reproducing them all, 
to the very hfe, and a little beyond. His genius 
is photographic in its truth and in its exaggeration. 
It may transcend the ordinary, — it never out- 
rages the possible. His pictures are, on the whole, 
boldly, ruggedly real ; yet touched by tender, 
relenting, ideal lights, which only a poet could 
see belonged there. I have seen two or three 
miners who might have walked out of his verse, 
so quaint and simple and sturdy and Bret Hartey 



264 CALIFORNIA. 



were they. But most of this class have the 
swing and the slang and the swear, without the 
sentiment. They can bring out " That 's so," and 
" You bet," and " Little cuss," very satisfactorily ; 
but somehow they don't look like men likely to 
play Damon in a Drift, or Child's Nurse in 
a Roaring Camp, or Santa Claus at Simpson's 
Bar. 

But to return to our journey. From Vallejo 
the California Pacific passes up the smiHng, wav- 
ing, sunny, shadowy Napa Valley, one of the 
most beautiful and fruitful of the many happy 
valleys in this grand State. Napa City is a 
charmingly situated town, neat and bright, and 
embowered in vines and roses. St. Helena is 
another exceedingly attractive place, and the drive 
from there to the Springs was most enjoyable. 
The White Sulphur Springs are in a canon, deep, 
and with thickly wooded sides, but wide enough 
to allow of the free entrance of sunshine during 
a good part of the day. A clear, sparkling, mu- 
sical stream runs through it, and ferns, mosses, 
shrubs and flowers and vines abound. In fact, it 
is one of the very loveliest spots I have seen in 



WHITE SULPHUR SPRINGS. 265 

California, — the very place to rest in from the 
fatigue of overland travel, or the more intolera- 
ble weariness of a sea voyage, or from the social 
dissipation and fierce stock -gambling excitements 
of the city. 

I mean to tell the simple truth, in all good 
feeling, in regard to these places of resort, having 
some little sense of responsibility and of duty 
toward the travelling public. Prices at these 
Springs are. high, as at all places of the kind on 
the coast, unreasonably high for so fruitful a land 
and so bounteous a market, and considering the 
usually very indifferent accommodations and in- 
sufficient attendance ; but at this particular place 
courteous attention is paid to the guests, the table 
is good, if not sumptuous, and neatness and good 
order are the rule. It is worth while to visit the 
place for the sake of the excellent society you 
are very sure to meet there, and for the exquisite 
pictures you will carry away with you of the flow- 
ery canon, and the wild but lovely grounds about 
the Springs. I shall never forget a dehcious 
horseback ride I took there one perfect afternoon ; 
and I left my blessing on the sunny head of the 
12 



266 CALIFORNIA, 



dear boy who generously denied himself the pleas- 
ure of his usual gallop to lend his horse to me 
for a few bright, swift, enchanted hours. 

Calistoga Hot Springs, some ten miles up the 
Napa Valley, has a very picturesque outlook, hav- 
ing old Mount St. Helena in full sight ; but it is 
not in itself attractive. It has too little shelter 
from the sun, or privacy of any kind ; it is a dus- 
ty, noisy, all-out-doors sort of a place during the 
day, while mosquitoes of a peculiarly huge and fe- 
rocious sort make night hideous. Yet the kindly 
hotel people seem to have done their best to 
protect their lodgers from these imps of darkness 
by a very ingenious contrivance. Over each bed 
is hung a mosquito-trap, in the shape of a small, 
circular pink net, rather pretty to look at, which 
revolves continually, swooping up mosquitoes at 
every turn, till at last they are all snugly gath- 
ered in, and you can take refuge outside and 
sleep in peace. 

The accommodations here are very unequal. 
There are some quite pretty and commodious cot- 
tages, and some miserable shanties, called by cer- 
tain romantic names, as "Laurel," and "Willow," 



CALISTOGA HOT SPRINGS. 267 

but Utterly forlorn and comfortless. Into one of 
the latter was your correspondent put with her 
indignant companion, with not even a rocking- 
chair to soften the rigors of their lot But luck- 
ily a friend, with a nice room to spare in her 
cottage, came to the rescue ; and after that, life at 
the Springs was more tolerable, even with a bad 
cold. We managed to worry through two or three 
days, just. We found the landlord a genial, kind- 
ly personage, and the landlord's wife a sweet, bon- 
nie Scots-woman, and the landlord's wife's brother 
very agreeable and obliging. I shall long pleas- 
antly remember them. The waters here are doubt- 
less very efficacious for various ills, and in the 
baths you have a wide choice. You can dis- 
port yourself in a great swimming-basin, you can 
soak in bran-water, or be parboiled in steam right 
out of a tame geyser, or simmer in the " medicat- 
ed bath," or toast in the "sun-bath," or you can 
be plunged in warm, soft mud up to the chin. 
In old times the Indian doctors used to set their 
rheumatic patients over night, and in the morning 
they would pry them out, new men. This heroic 
treatment was subject to a slight drawback ; oc- 



268 CALIFORNIA. 



casionally it was found that the cayotes had come 
in the night, and eaten the patients' heads off. 

About five miles to the southwest of Cahstoga, 
lies the Petrified Forest, so called. The name, 
I am sorry to say, is calculated to mislead and 
delude the unsophisticated and confiding mind, as 
the " Forest," which many picture to themselves 
as standing in stony grandeur, full -limbed and 
leafed, with petrified nuts and cones, and birds'- 
nests with the birds on them, just as the petri- 
faction struck them, is found to consist merely 
of a few widely scattered, half-buried stumps and 
sections of trees, — not by any means a full as- 
sortment, — curious things, certainly, and respecta- 
ble on account of age, but hardly repaying one 
for the trouble and expense of seeking them. 
The grotto of this same mummified sort of tim- 
ber, to be seen near the Calistoga Hotel, is ^uite 
as satisfactory, especially if one can grasp and 
hold the idea that it grew, and stands where it 
was petrified. 

When, after a charming drive, we arrived at 
the Forest, we were commended to a guide, 
living on the land, which he has "taken up." 



THE PETRIFIED FOREST. 269 

A primitive and pensive solitary is he, a gentle 
hermit of the dale, and known as " Petrified 
Charley." He converses learnedly by the way on 
the mysteries of science and nature, especially on 
volcanoes, and gives you to understand that his 
theory in regard to the trees differs from that 
of Marsh or Whitney. He thinks they never 
"growed" where they lie, but were heaved up 
here from the *^ walley " in a " conwulsion." 
That explains the petrified grotto down at the 
Springs. He glows with mild enthusiasm over 
his particular pet petrifactions, — one monstrous 
trunk, a stump of ancient charcoal, another 
stump, in the heart of which is yet to be seen 
the almost unchanged fibre of the primeval red- 
wood, a rare done petrifaction. 

The most interesting of all his sights is a 
huge trunk, one of the unhappy conifer family, 
overtaken by that mysterious misfortune ages on 
ages ago, out of a cleft of which trunk has 
grown a stately young tree. It seemed almost 
as strange as it would be to one, rambling in 
the vicinity of old Sodom, to come upon Lot's 
crystallized wife, with a live baby in her arms. 



270 CALIFORNIA. 



This miraculous tree bore strange fruit, in the 
shape of the following notice. You will observe 
the petrified character of the orthography : — 

" Visiters going on the forest without the 
guide charder the same, when the guide is 
Present, visiters are requoisted not to break, or 
cary away any of the Ptrefid wod without the 
oner's permistion." 

Early every morning, during the season of 
mountain travel, Foss and Connolly's six-horse 
stages — which, by the way, are open wagons, but 
as comfortable as they are safe — leave the hotel 
at the Springs for the Geysers, over the hills 
some twenty-eight miles away. One of these 
wagons is always driven by the renowned Foss 
himself, but now, in the immense increase of 
travel, he has to divide himself, as it were, to 
give all a taste of his quality, taking his pas- 
sengers only to the half-way station, where he 
meets the returning stages, one of which he 
drives back to Calistoga, making his grand entry 
at the hotel grounds a little after midday in 
thoroughly magnificent style. It would thrill 
your heart to see that entry as it has not been 



TO THE GEYSERS. 271 

thrilled since first you saw in your old childish 
days the throbbing canvas withdrawn, the wooden 
barrier removed, and the whole splendid troop 
of circus-riders come dashing into the ring ! 

The route from here to the Geysers is not 
the highly picturesque and perilous road so often 
described by terrified tourists from Healdsburg, 
over the Hog's Back and the Sugar-Loaf, and 
down a grade that was simply something ap- 
palling. Foss, the great driver, who has gath- 
ered all his bristling honors on the Hog's 
Back, professes to have become satiated with 
renown, to have " supped full of horrors," and 
will drive on that " parlous " mountain track no 
more, for love nor money. His new road is 
admirably constructed, commands some grand 
views, and has some sufficiently dangerous and 
awe-inspiring points. To me the entire drive 
was full of keen and thrilling enjoyment ; the 
magnificent and ever-varying views, the glorious 
mountain air, the silver glimpses of mountain 
streams, the dense summer foliage, the marvel- 
lous multitude of flowers, the joyous company 
of birds, all along the wild, winding, lovely, 



272 CALIFORNIA. 



lonely way. For many miles toiling up and dash- 
ing down the mountain, we passed no human 
habitation, encountered no human creature ; all 
save the well-built road was primeval wildness 
and shadow and savage mystery. Around point 
after point and curve after curve, we crept or 
swung, in slow ascent and swift descent. A 
mountain wall on one side, a steep declivity, 
dipping down to a dark canon on the other, 
and we soon ceased to repine for the Hog's 
Back, with a sheer precipice on either hand. 
We had scarcely room in our full hearts to envy 
the fortunate tourists who, last summer, when 
this road was first opened, saw sometimes a big 
grizzly galloping along before them, like an 
avant-comier. All the younger drivers on this 
road have been trained by Foss. They have a 
good deal of his nerve, his accuracy and careful- 
ness, without his splendid dash. The two we 
rode with, Nash and Gwin, we found rare good 
fellows, sociable, obliging, and intelligent. We 
were really surprised at their store of informa- 
tion in regard to the plants, birds, and animals 
of the region. Not a flower nodded to us from 



THE GEYSER HOTEL. 273 

the bank, but they knew its name. Not a 
winged creature piped to us out of the solitude, 
but they recognized its note. 

The Geyser Springs Hotel is a rough, rambling, 
rather picturesque edifice, embowered in shade, — 
a cool, quiet, unpretending place. It is well kept 
by a genial and intelligent German, "which his 
name " is Susenbeth. Here we were kindly enter- 
tained, and found, if not luxuries, some comforts, 
which we were well prepared to appreciate. Here, 
if they did not have bills of fare, they had fair bills, 
and if we were not lodged luxuriously, we had no. 
reason to remember regretfully accommodations in 
more pretentious hotels below, where beds were a 
hollow mockery, where pillows dissolved and slunk 
away under our heads, where mosquito-bars were a 
delusion and a snare, where cleanliness, ventilation, 
and slop-jars were not. 

In the landlord's young wife we found a singu- 
larly spirited and original character, an enthusiastic 
mountaineer, a good rider, climber, and shot. In 
rough Yosemite costume, she explores these heights 
and gorges ; she hunts the deer, the fox, the hare, 
though the wildcat is her specialty. 



274 



CALIFORNIA. 



The air at this mountain retreat is pure and bra- 
cing ; for though you descend for miles to reach the 
spot, it has the respectable altitude of sixteen hun- 
dred and ninety feet above the level of the sea. 
The waters and baths are said to possess wonderful 
curative powers. The great tragedian, Edwin For- 
rest, while suffering from a severe attack of rheu- 
matism, some years ago, went into the Indian mud- 
bath one day, and came out all ready to play Othello 
or Metamora. 

Just opposite the hotel, across a little foot-bridge, 
is the mouth of the great Geyser, or Devil's Canon. 
This mysterious, vaporous gorge we had no diffi- 
culty in exploring, attired as we were in short 
dresses and stout boots, with a good alpenstock 
in hand ; though, if you do not look where you 
step, you may get your foot in, almost anywhere. 
All the way you seem to be walking over a thin, 
hard crust, just dividing you from black, boiling 
abysses and sulphurous seas, — all the classic hor- 
rors of Tartarus, and the later orthodox horrors of 
" the lake of fire and brimstone." As I marked 
the hissing hot steam and the stifling vapors burst- 
ing out on every side, certain sacred texts, familiar 



THE GEYSERS. 275 



to my happy Sunday-school days, came back to me, 
and I found myself pensively repeating, " The smoke 
of their torment ascendeth up for ever and ever." 
Surely, "it is good to be here." 

We had a guide who, though young, was wise, 
and threw a blaze of light on our ignorance at 
every step. The Devil seems to be recognized as 
the original proprietor of this region : the gulch 
is full of his diggings ; every point or object of 
interest is named after him, with the exception 
of the Great Caldron, named after the Witches of 
Macbeth, but that *s all in the family ; and a grotto, 
named Proserpine, on account of her Plutonian 
associations. She gathered here the fiour of sul- 
phur, perhaps. Yet there is another grotto lately 
named for Mr. Delano, who, in one of his little 
excursions, dropped in on the Geysers. It strikes 
me he may as modestly as appropriately accept 
here some of the Devil's superfluous honors, being 
Secretary of the hiterior. 

You are early invited to rest on The Devil's 
Arm-Chair, and to pause in a dark rocky nook, 
where things are lying about loose, and wild 
disorder reigns, called The Devil's Office. From 



276 CALIFORNIA. 



this point for nearly half a mile you meet no tree, 
no shrub, scarcely a tuft of grass, on your rough 
path. The earth along the stream, and far up the 
steep banks, is like ashes, dead and dry, except 
where the hot springs pour madly forth. But great 
portions of both ground and rock are " ringed, 
streaked, and spotted " by a vast variety of chemi- 
cal deposits and compounds ; for the canon is but 
a huge diabolical chemical laboratory. There is 
the Alum and Iron Spring, the Boiling Alum 
and Sulphur Spring, the Black Sulphur Spring, 
the Intermittent Scalding Spring, the Boiling Eye- 
Water Spring, the Alkali Spring, and the Black 
Spring, holding nitrate of silver, and called The 
Devil's Inkstand. All these you are generously 
invited to taste as you pass along. You can 
reach out almost anywhere and help yourself to 
Epsom-salts. Sulphur lies about you in tempt- 
ing profusion, like yellow snow. What a paradise 
for the female Squeers ! Then you have copperas, 
iron, alum, tartaric acid, magnesia, and cinnabar — 
holding mercury — and other allopathic horrors. No 
wonder Nature is sick here, palsied, jaundiced, af- 
flicted with sore boils and other eruptions. The 



THE CANON OF EVIL. 277 

Ugliest of all her ailments is the "black vomit," 
the before-mentioned Devil's Inkstand. That nasty 
little fountain seems to bubble forth with a spiteful 
alacrity, as though to supply an unlimited order 
from the satanic school of literature. 

It was a strange, bewildering walk, or rather 
scramble, up that desolate, dreary canon, with its 
countless evil sights and smells, over hot slag and 
scoria, with the whistle and hiss and gurgle and 
" chug, chug " of internal forces and infernal ma- 
chinery beneath and around you. The most aw- 
ful thing to see is The Witches' Caldron, a black, 
mysterious, tumultuous, boiling well, " over seven 
feet in diameter and of unknown depth." It has 
been sounded four hundred yards and no bottom 
found. Its temperature is 292° Fahrenheit. Eggs 
are often boiled in it by tourists ; and a whole ox 
can be as satisfactorily cooked in it, if you are 
fond of ox boiled in sulphur water. All this is so, 
for I heard the guide tell the story repeatedly. To 
each of the party he told it in precisely the same 
words ; indeed, I must confess to having com- 
pelled the ingenuous youth to go over it several 
times for my benefit alone, — I being blessed with 



278 CALIFORNIA. 



a bad memory, and having an unfortunate desire 
to be ^accurate in my statements. The grandest 
thing to hear of all these wonders is The Steam- 
boat. A large portion of the bank, standing out 
like a mound, seems alive with Geysers, throbbing, 
shaking, roaring, and puffing with a stupendous force 
and fury of fighting elements. This most vexed 
and tortured point in the canon sends up the 
heaviest columns of steam, and never softens its 
" terrible rumble and grumble and roar." Some 
time since a tourist undertook to examine it from 
above, but presently sank to his knees in the hot, 
biting mineral deposits and made haste to depart. 
He sacrificed a pair of trousers to science, and 
came near having to throw in his legs. 

A fine point of observation is a rocky height 
just above and opposite The Steamboat, called 
The Devil's Pulpit. How easy to preach from 
this point a regular, old-fashioned Calvinistic ser- 
mon ! It would almost preach itself Here we 
turned to the left, and began our descent by an- 
other and a pleasanter way. We even found a 
"Lovers' Retreat," a green and flowery nook; but 
the Devil was even near that little sylvan paradise. 



FREE FROM THE INFERNO. 279 

with his Lunch-Table and his Teakettle, and 
other culinary appointments, not comprehended in 
the group of geysers known as his Kitchen. We 
were shown the supposed crater of the extinct vol- 
cano through which all these panting, hissing de- 
mons once found vent for their angry passions. 
It is a moderate-sized hollow in the earth, not 
to be compared with the Solfatara near Naples. 

It was strange with what jolly spirits and hearty 
appetites we gathered at mess, after our perilous re- 
connoissance of the great enemy's works, — strange 
that we were not more solemnized by that awesome 
stroll on the borders of another and a hotter world. 
I have an idea that Mrs. Proserpine Pluto, when 
she made her yearly visits to her mother, relished 
the barley-cakes and cracked wheat poor Ceres 
had ready for her, and that if Eurydice could have 
got out of the infernal regions with her husband 
Orpheus, before his charm was "played out," she 
would have had no objection to a supper of wild 
kid, or oysters from Lake Avernus ; I suspect that 
if Dives could have returned to warn those wicked 
kinsmen of his, he would have delivered his homily 
over a smoking board and a flowing bowl. 



28o CALIFORNIA. 



The evening was cool, and we all enjoyed a 
bright wood fire, sitting beside an old-fashioned 
fireplace in the pleasant parlor. We made a call 
on our fair landlady, the huntress of the Geysers. 
We found her in her boudoir, quietly sewing on a 
silken vestment, with her sandaled feet resting on 
a barbaric brindled rug, the skin of one of her own 
wildcats. 

Early on a resplendent morning we drove reluc- 
tantly from the pleasant inn, and out of the sight 
and sound of the great Geysers. They do not 
spout as high as I looked to see them, and they 
" roar you more gently " than I expected to hear 
them ; but they are well worth seeing for once in 
one's lifetime, and must always be remembered as 
something "grand, gloomy, and peculiar." 

Wash. Gwin drove us to Pine Flat Station, be- 
yond the summit, where we met Foss, who gave 
my friend and me seats on the box. Let me give 
a little sketch of this really remarkable person. 
Clarke Foss, a New Hampshire man by birth, and 
now about forty-five years of age, is tall, large, 
sturdy, and ruddy, has a strong head, with close, 
curling, dark hair, a rugged face, a clear eye, and 



A MONARCH OF THE COACH-BOX. 



a firm jaw, a look of mastery and will, matchless 
courage, and a certain rude cynicism, — marks of 
a character which would be hard and reckless and 
even cruel, but for the quaint humor, kindly in 
spite of him, — a native heartiness and sympathy, 
and a large, dashing generosity, which a good deal 
of misfortune and some bitter experiences in life 
have never been able to destroy. The build of 
the man is magnificent and his muscular power 
is extraordinary. 

Mr Foss has his own philosophy of life, his 
own ideas on morals and religion, — ideas that 
would slightly astonish a student of ethics, and 
startle an Andover theologian ; but in the domain 
of grand stage-routes, over subjugated horse-flesh, 
lies his greatness. He is the monarch of the 
coach-box. We may put faith in his subordinates, 
may even admire their arts with the reins, 
their little airs with the whip : but when we sit 
beside Foss, and watch for a few moments his 
magnificent driving, we see a difference : " the 
substitute shines brightly as the king, until the 
king is by." No driving I have ever seen has 
given me such an impression of power and of 



282 CALIFORNIA. 



skill, of audacity and security. It is free and 
dashing, yet marvelously accurate ; it is furiously 
fast, yet smooth and even, and seems calculated in 
every curve and angle with mathematical preci- 
sion and certainty. In truth, I cannot conceive of 
greater luxury of locomotion than a ride by the 
side of Foss down those beautiful mountain slopes. 
This mighty "son of Nimshi" is not rough or 
rigorous with his horses, at least after they are 
trained. He believes in a horse, and has great 
patience and tact in breaking one in. Each horse 
knows his name, and will answer to it instantly ; 
indeed, seems always listening for it, with every 
nerve strung and every faculty attent. His words 
of command are few and simple. At his "All 
right ! " " Shake out ! " or " Let go ! " all six spring 
forward as one horse. To his " Steady, boys ! " or 
" Slow ! " or " Look sharp ! " they pay instant and 
perfect heed. He plays on their affection, pride, 
ambition, all their grand equine passions, as a skillful 
musician plays on his instrument. And yet these 
horses seem not so much subjugated as inspired 
creatures. They recognize " authority in the spirit 
of a glad obedience ; hardly seem to feel that they 



THE VINEYARDS OF NAPA. 283 

are driven, but evidently fancy that they are going 
at that splendid rate of their own accord, and for 
the fun of it. 

All tourists ambitious of having an experience 
like mine, — a wild, galloping drive like Phaeton's, 
without the responsibility and the peril, — should 
lose no time in making this glorious excursion. 
The great Geysers will spout forever, but alas ! the 
great driver will not drive forever. The time must 
come at last, may come soon, when his burly form 
and bluff countenance will disappear from the box, 
when his firm foot will press the brake, when his 
strong hands will hold the reins and the whip, no 
more ; when all those clever, half-human horses 
will listen for his ringing voice in vain ; when the 
renowned and lamented Clarke Foss will rest from 
his labors, and retire on a comfortable competence. 

On our way home we spent a night with friends 
in pleasant Napa, and in the morning took stage 
over the hills to Sonoma Valley, where we spent 
two or three days among the vine-growers, very 
agreeably. Our host. Major Snyder, a genial and 
hospitable gentleman, has choice vineyards, and 
manufactures wine of very superior quality. Ad- 



284 CALIFORNIA, 



joining his are the vineyards of the " Buena Vista 
Vinecultural Society," who really do a business in 
proportion to their name. They make various 
kinds of white and red wine, brandy, and cham- 
pagne of excellent quality. They have nearly five 
hundred acres in vines. Their wine-cellars, now 
containing two hundred thousand gallons of wine 
and brandy and six thousand dozen of champagne, 
are excavations in the solid rock. These sombre 
halls, as we passed through them, tapers in hand, 
reminded us of the Roman Catacombs ; but the 
agreeable young men who escorted us were not 
much after the Dominican order of guides, and the 
entertainment they gave us was far other than 
the droning out of old, saintly legends. The entire 
process of manufacture was courteously explained 
to me, and afterward impressed on my mind by a 
sparkling glass of the last, highest result, — cham- 
pagne of the most delicious flavor and delicate 
pink topaz tint. 

From Sonoma we had a charming morning 
ride of ten miles, on the outside of the stage- 
coach, to Lakeville, and from thence, by rail 
and steamboat, a quiet little journey, through 



HOW TO CURE A COLD. 285 

dazzling sunshine and over placid waters, to the 
city, — busy, gusty, dusty, dear old Frisco ! 

I ought not to omit stating that the cold and 
cough that had oppressed and racked me for 
two weeks suddenly and mysteriously departed at 
Sonoma. So, if you have a cold which nothing 
else can move or touch, the remedy is simple 
and easy, and not disagreeable. Seek the wild, 
sweet air of Sonoma, partake freely of it, then 
take a glass or two of Major Snyder's El Cer- 
rito, say once in six hours, alternated with Bu- 
ena Vista champagne, abstain from stimulants, 
and avoid all work, and you will see the result. 
A cold that can't be cured by such means is n't 
worth curing. 

Vera Cruz, May 30. 
Like the progressive women we are, my dear 
companion and I rested but a short time in 
town, and then resumed our jolly journeying. 
We went first to Santa Clara, where we visited 
some pleasant friends who own one of the great 
fruit ranches with which that beautiful region 
abounds. Here we revelled in bloom and shade 
and fragrance ; here we ate ripe cherries from 



286 CALIFORNIA. 



the trees and strawberries from the vines. Here 
we rambled through long avenues of apple and 
pear and peach trees of noble growth, and past 
fine vineyards and raspberry and blackberry plan- 
tations. Mr. Watkins, our host, has now a hun- 
dred acres in fruit trees of the choicest varieties 
and in the best possible condition. Twenty years 
ago, on this ranch, there was but a single tree, 
— a live-oak. All this seems rather creation than 
cultivation. 

Just as the brilUant summer day was melting into 
the tender, purple twilight, we drove down to 
San Jose, — that wonderful drive through the Ala- 
meda, — and put up at the Auzerais House, a 
handsome, but home-like hotel, and admirably kept. 
Such a satisfactory stopping-place you do not find 
everywhere, even in California. "When found 
make a note of it." 

On the morning of the second day we set out 
with a party of friends for the New Almaden 
quicksilver mines, some twelve miles away, in the 
Santa Cruz range of mountains, and on the Ala- 
mitos Creek, — a very charming drive ordinarily at 
this season, when the road is well shaded. But 



NEW ALMADEN QUICKSILVER. 287 

a late spring frost blighted the young foliage 
of the noble sycamores which stand all along the 
way, and there is now little to soften or brighten 
the sunny, dusty journey. 

This quicksilver mine, the largest and richest 
in the world with the exception of the old Al- 
maden in Spain, has been systematically worked 
for only twenty years. It was first known to 
white men as long ago as 1824, worked a while 
for silver, and then for a long time abandoned. 
The padres at the Santa Clara Mission had some 
specimens of the cinnabar, and in 1845 hap- 
pened to show them to a visitor, one Andreas 
Castillero, a Mexican captain of cavalry, who 
knew something of quicksilver mining. He pul- 
verized a lump, and sprinkled the powder on 
some live coals laid on a tile. He next flung 
water on the coals, then placed a tumbler over 
them, and presently had the satisfaction of see- 
ing little globules of quicksilver forming on the 
glass, — the tiny forerunners of rivers of wealth 
yet to flow from the secret depths of the moun- 
tain. With his simple little reduction-works, he 
had solved the problem that had baffled the 



288 CALIFORNIA. 



miners, the prospecters, and the priests ; hke Moses 
he had struck the rock and let out the bright, 
illusive, mysterious flood. I believe he did not 
greatly profit by his discovery ; indeed, the mines 
for many years were worked in a very unprofitable 
and irregular way. As usual, a mine had to be 
put into a mine, a fortune expended, before any- 
thing could be realized. There are evidences 
everywhere, in works, roads, shafts, and tunnels, 
of immense expenditures. 

In the last twenty years, some twenty-five 
million dollars' worth of quicksilver has been sold, 
and of late the discovery of rich deposits at a 
great depth are very encouraging. But it is the 
most uncertain sort of mining, there being noth- 
ing like a regular vein of ore to follow, but 
only in many places very slight threads connect- 
ing the "ore-spots," while some of the deposits 
are isolated, lying hidden slyly away in Nature's 
most secret drawers and dark pockets. The 
process of reducing the ore, of rousing the latent 
mercury from its sleep of a million or so of 
years, is very interesting and easy of compre- 
hension, even to a woman, when patiently and 



THE BIRTH OF MERCURY. 289 

pleasantly explained, as it was to us. It is sim- 
ply burned out of house and home, or its dull 
old body perishes by cremation, that it may ap- 
pear in a glorified form, to shine and serve in 
a thousand beautiful ways. It is compelled to 
wake and come forth, or, as an old miner said, 
to " git up and git," by intense and long-continued 
heat. The ore is put into furnaces, each holding 
fifteen thousand pounds, and having in one end 
the fire, which is kept up for about three days. 
The vapors from the heated ores pass from the 
furnaces through small apertures, like pigeon-holes, 
into condensing - chambers, on the cool walls of 
which the globules of mercury form, and glide at 
once to the floor, where they collect in little 
gutters and flow out into troughs, which convey 
them to an iron caldron, from which they are 
transferred to the wrought -iron flasks in which 
they are sent to market. Each flask contains 
seventy-six and a half pounds, the equivalent of 
seventy-five pounds Spanish measure, and is 
worth forty dollars. 

It was strange to see this fluid treasure come 
flowing and flashing down like a mountain stream, 
13 



290 CALIFORNIA. 



to see it dipped up like so much spring water. 
The unstable, illusive character of this costly prod- 
uct is not understood by all visitors. Young and 
curious tourists have been known to attempt to 
carry away a thimbleful or so in their pockets, 
and have confessed to having at once experienced 
a singular trickling, tickling sensation, usually pass- 
ing like a streak of cold lightning down the right 
leg and into the boot. One elderly gentleman, by 
profession clerical but by temperament mercurial, 
once succeeded in secreting a portion of quick- 
silver in his spectacle-case, which he carried in the 
same breast-pocket with his watch. His little theft 
was not discovered at the time, but the next morn- 
ing he indignantly proclaimed that he had been 
robbed. His valuable gold repeater had been taken 
from his pocket, and a silver watch put in its place. 
The contents of the spectacle-case had also mys- 
teriously disappeared. 

Quicksilver in the mass has such a molten look 
that you shrink from touching it ; but it is exceed- 
ingly cold. It gives you a strange sensation to 
plunge your hand into the solid, fluid, heavy, buoy- 
ant substance, which has the very chill of death. 



SLIPPERY SILVER. 



291 



yet is alive in every infinitesimal globule. There 
seemed to me something unsubstantial about it, 
after all. I could clutch it, but not hold it. It 
was like palpable moonshine. I dipped my hand 
in up to the wrist, and not a particle adhered to 
my fingers. Silver never would stay by me. 

The recent great influx of visitors has compelled 
the directors of this mine to deny strangers access 
to the reducing-works and the tunnels, unless they 
come with a special order from the president of 
the company or some other official personage. Of 
course, the manager, Mr. Randol, resident at the 
works, has the privilege of doing the honors at 
any time to his friends and his friends' friends. I 
was so fortunate as to bear a lettter to him from 
one whose name is an " open sesame " everywhere 
on this coast, because it is the synomyme of gener- 
osity and hospitality, and all good and genial feel- 
ing. 

We met Mr. Randol on his way to San Jose on 
business, and presented the letter, asking merely 
for a line to some subordinate at New Almaden, 
which would insure us a sight of the reduction- 
works and something of the mine. To our sur- 



292 CALIFORNIA. 



prise he insisted on returning with us, on accom- 
panying us everywhere, giving up the entire day 
to us, in fact, and all with an air of such perfect 
willingness and, indeed, enjoyment, that we could 
not feel oppressed by such unusual and unlooked- 
for courtesy. We gave ourselves up to the pleas- 
ure of a perfect, golden day, full of rare interest, 
and to the delight of his bright companionship, 
with careless but not unthankful abandon. Mr. 
Randol is a cultivated gentleman, young for a po- 
sition so responsible, a New-Yorker, and a good 
RepubUcan. Can I say more ? Yes ; such bland 
politeness, such gentle and smiling patience as his 
in answering questions I have not found, — no, not 
in California. 

First of all, Mr. Randol showed us the reduc- 
tion-works, of which I have tried to give some 
slight idea. I was surprised at the number of 
chambers necessary for the thorough condensation 
of the vapor. It sometimes passes through ten or 
eleven before all the quicksilver is precipitated. 
The uncondensed, deleterious portions are carried 
away by flues into an immense high chimney, 
which lets them off where they can do no harm to 



UNDERGROUND MYSTERIES. 293 

man or beast The stories of miners and mules 
perishing gloomily of mercurial poison, of un- 
happy smelters "working out their own salivation 
with fear and trembUng," are no longer to be 
credited. 

From the works we drove up the mountain 
to the new tunnel, which is the one most 
worked at this time. It is several hundred feet 
below the old workings, is about twenty-five 
hundred feet in length, ten feet wide, and well 
timbered, where it is not cut through the hardest 
kind of rock. Into this grand tunnel our party 
was taken in grand style. We rode in ore-cars, 
on blocks of wood, which made the most reliable 
sort of seats. We were drawn by a stout and 
serious-minded mule, and each fellow of us carried 
a lighted candle stuck in a split stick. Thus 
we plunged into the darkness and the silence 
of inner earth, and woke the sullen echoes with 
laughter and merry shouts, and called out with our 
flickering torches momentary gleams from crystals 
imprisoned in the dull rocks for ages, dreaming 
of the light. Looking back from the first car 
in the procession, it had a strange wild look, 



294 CALIFORNIA. 



and we all had a sense of something adventur- 
ous and mysterious, and delightfully awful and 
Arabian-Nightish, about the expedition. We for- 
got that we lived in a prosaic Christian land, 
and in virtuous Tammany times, and should 
hardly have been surprised to come upon the 
cave of the Forty Thieves, with all their 
treasure in it ; or, when we turned back to the 
day, to have found the door of the tunnel 
closed against us. 

When about eighteen hundred feet in, we left 
our cars, and walked the rest of the way — and a 
wild, rough, pitfallish way it was — to drifts where 
the men are now working at the new discoveries. 
The ore is very fine here, and apparently 
abundant, the cinnabar showing, in wide, long 
deposits, the rich, red arteries of the heart of 
the old mountain. 

The air in the tunnel and drifts we found 
not impure, damp, or oppressive, yet we were 
quite willing to return to outside wind and 
warmth and sunlight. In going out our mule 
was put to his metal, and made wonderful time. 
It really seemed as if the animal had absorbed 



A ROUGH BUT ROYAL DRIVE. 295 

quicksilver into his veins or muscles. Ah ! it 
was a jolly run, with nothing to break the 
merry flow of talk and laughter but an occa- 
sional shout from our driver of "Heads down!" or 
" Look sharp ! " as we passed under low-lying tim- 
bers or round a sharp corner. 

I have had many a grand drive in my day. I 
have driven in the Corso in carnival time ; my 
elegant hired hack figured in a procession miles 
long, going to a Queen's prorogation of ParUa- 
ment ; I have driven to weddings and races and 
reviews and fashionable funerals ; but never 
have I enjoyed a drive as I enjoyed this. It 
was rough, but royal, — full of exhilaration and 
jollity. 

At this point two of our party felt compelled 
to return to San Jose, taking our carriage. Mr. 
Randol kindly took my companion and myself 
into his own carriage, in which we proceeded 
up the mountain. The second carriage-load — a 
charming family party of five, who are doing 
California in the most thorough and leisurely 
manner — was happy to make a day of it 
with us. 



296 CALIFORNIA. 



The fine drive up the mountain and around 
its summit gave us some of the most superb 
and enchanting views I have yet had in CaHfor- 
nia. I will not attempt to describe them ; in- 
deed, in their peculiar, quiet loveliness, they are 
as indescribable as unforgetable. Yet, after our 
profound underground experiences and fine upper- 
air exaltations, we had excellent appetites for the 
generous lunch ordered for us by Mr. Randol, 
whose health we joyfully drank. 

Returned by a cool, dashing drive down the 
mountain to the pleasant little hamlet at New 
Almaden, we strolled for a while through the 
grounds of the picturesque country-house built 
by General Halleck when he was manager of the 
mine ; and then our friend and host proceeded 
to crown the courtesy which had made for us a 
day of unequaled enjoyment, by having attached 
to his carriage four fresh, spirited, handsome, 
horses. And so, in such state, he drove us back 
to our hotel at San Jose, through the splendors 
of sunset and the freshness of evening airs. 
Could anything have been finer or jollier, more 
nobby or nabob-y, than that ? 



ALONG THE ALAMEDA. 297 

I take great satisfaction in assuring the Hon- 
orable President and Directors of the Quick- 
silver Mining Company in New York, that they 
could not possibly have a more satisfactory man 
for manager than Mr. J. B. Randol. 

On the morning of the third day we took out- 
side places on the stage-coach for Santa Cruz. 
The drive down the Alameda was pleasant but 
comparatively prosaic. It should be driven 
through always in the twilight or moonlight. 
Then your imagination goes back to the rough, 
romantic, half-heathenish times, before gold or 
silver was discovered on the coast, and when 
these old willows were young. Then you easily 
picture the padres walking under their mys- 
terious shadows, and would hardly be surprised 
to meet a procession of black-robed, keen-eyed, 
tight-lipped Jesuit ghosts, taking their consti- 
tutional, walking stealthily, two by two. 

We were fortunate enough to find in an outside 
passenger with us the husband of the Santa Cruz 
friend we were going to visit. He had just been 
taking a run over to England, and was full of 
pleasant stories of travel and sight-seeing. 
13* 



298 CALIFORNIA. 



This is called one of the grandest stage-routes in 
the State ; but we found ourselves compelled to 
pass through a purgatory of hot, blinding, stifling 
dust, before reaching the " Delectable Mountains." 
The ride across the San Jose Valley was tedious, 
but it was soon forgotten when we began to as- 
cend the splendid grade. The descent was, on 
the whole, the wildest, most thrilling, and magnifi- 
cent drive I have ever taken anywhere. It is more 
perilous by far than the present Geyser drive, and 
commands views of more savage grandeur. Our 
coachman drove his six horses furiously, and there 
were many narrow curves, where it seemed that 
the least accident to the high Concord coach, or a 
moment's fright or viciousness on the part of the 
horses, would have been certain destruction for us 
all ; but the fine mountain air and the beauty and 
magnificence of the scenery supplied the necessary 
nerve and excitement. On these mountains and 
in their dark canons I had my first view of the 
redwoods, in all their sombre grandeur, — the most 
primitive, peculiar, and individual of trees. Where 
they are greenest, they have a look of age ; where 
most congregated, a look of loneUness. 



THE BIG TREES. 299 



Santa Cruz is a beautiful, smiling town, seated 
on the knees of pleasant terraces, with her feet in 
the sea. It has no splendid residences, but many 
pretty, home-like houses, embowered in flowers and 
foliage. Its handsomest edifice is the Unitarian 
Church. We have enjoyed, with absolutely childish 
delight, our visits to the beach, — watching the glo- 
rious surf, looking out on the infinite blue reaches 
of sea. It seems to me the Pacific has a more 
cerulean hue than the Atlantic, perhaps because it 
comes directly from the Celestial Empire. 

We had a day of pure enjoyment in the woods. 
We drove for five or six miles up the beautiful 
canon of the San Lorenzo, a shadowed, winding, 
mountain road, such as we find nowhere but on 
this coast, and picnicked among the "big trees." 
These are gigantic redwoods, not quite equal to 
the Calaveras or Mariposa trees ; but wait a few 
hundred years and you will see. The largest, 
named for Fremont, is two hundred and ten feet 
in height and eighteen feet in diameter. In the 
hollow trunk of another, Fremont had his quarters 
for a while. A man can ride into this on horse- 
back, and stable the horse. I was told that a 



30O 



CALIFORNIA. 



devoted wife once spent here several months with 
her husband, a lumberman, and kept a couple of 
boarders. I felt for her. I know what it is to 
live in trunks. By the way, a young fellow-pas- 
senger on the stage told us several astonishing 
stories about some big trees near Visalia. One, 
he said, parted into three about sixteen feet from 
the ground, and at the point of separation there 
was a hollow, which hollow was always filled with 
water, — was, in fact a little lake, thirty feet wide 
and seventeen feet deep. So you could bathe or 
boat in it if you wished to, or bob for eels. He 
described the monstrous hollow trunk of a fallen 
tree, into which he once rode on horseback, and, 
after trying in vain to reach the concave ceiling 
with his cane, galloped on for some distance, and 
then rode calmly out through a knot-hole, — a prov- 
idential opening for the young man. But I have 
found that the only safe way in this country is to 
doubt nothing you hear. I have an impression 
that I shall some time come upon that triune tree, 
with its remarkable water privileges ; perhaps find 
it utilized into a railroad-tank or a baptistery. I 
half expect to ride into the same trunk prospected 



DARE-DEVIL DRIVERS AGAIN. 30I 

by my young fellow-traveller, and to emerge at the 
same knot-hole. 

San Francisco, June 3. 

We left Santa Cruz yesterday morning, and came 
straight through by the Watsonville route. The 
scenery on this route is pleasant, but rather tame, 
with the exception of that in the Monterey Valley. 
It gives you a good idea of the stupendous grain 
and cattle business. The wild-flower show is pal- 
ing out. The golden poppies grow small by de- 
grees and beautifully less, but there are still, here 
and there, blue lakes of lupin and larkspur. Mus- 
tard grows everywhere, bright against the dull 
green of the hillsides, — a beautiful pest. Even 
the thistle - blossoms of California are handsome. 
Some are of a peculiar dark blood-red. 

We had the usual outside seat, and studied 
nature along our route, especially the human 
nature of the driver. There certainly is some- 
thing in the employment of these men that 
sharpens their wits in certain directions, and 
individualizes them. They are almost always 
quaint, droll fellows, kindly and companionable. 
When, the other day, we were dashing down 



302 CALIFORNIA. 



the mountain at a frightful rate of speed, and 
some of the passengers remonstrated, the driver 
cheered us after Hank Monk's fashion, " Don't 
be troubled, I '11 get you in on time." It was in 
vain that we told him it was not time, but 
eternity, we were troubled about : he was bound 
to show us that Foss was not the only dare-devil 
on this coast. Yesterday's driver cheered and 
enlivened the way by stories of overturnings 
down steep banks, and robberies by highwaymen. 
The first he had, of course, no personal experi- 
ence of, but from the latter he had suffered 
on several occasions. The roads in the neigh- 
borhood of Visalia he spoke of as especially 
infested by bandits. I remarked that drivers 
and passengers on those perilous highways should 
always be armed, and ready for those melodra- 
matic gentlemen. " Madam," said he, impressively, 
" did you ever look down the barrel of a loaded 
shot-gun ? " I acknowledged that I had never 
taken that particular view of eternal realities. 
" Well, madam (see that old cat thar, pros- 
pecting about among them gopher-holes !), sup- 
pose you sot here in my place, and out, from 



THE YOSEMITE. 303 



behind that bush, thar, should jump a masked 
fellow, and cover you with a double-barrelled 
shot-gun, before you could have time to even 
think of drawing a pistol, and another masked 
fellow should seize your leaders, and you knew 
there were lots more of the rascals layin' low, 
just ready to put a head on you, — what could you 
do but ante up ? " 

GOING INTO THE YOSEMITE. 

The most popular present route to the valley — 
and I am inclined to think the most picturesque 
and comfortable, all things considered — is the 
Mariposa, via Merced. We went that way, a 
select party of seven, who left San Francisco on 
the 4th of June. At Merced we left the rail- 
way and spent the first night, stopping at the 
elegant new hotel, " El Capitan," built by the 
Central Pacific Railroad Company, — that dreadful 
monopoly that brings about so many beneficent 
improvements. Things were in rather an unset- 
tled, unfinished state, but we found excellent 
beds, and slept delightfully, as soon as we were 



304 CALIFORNIA. 



able to sleep at all ; but unluckily here, as at 
several places farther on, we "seven poor travel- 
lers" were sufferers from the untimely and un- 
bounded hilarity of a large, conglomerate party 
of tourists, mostly from Chicago and St. Louis. 
These young and joyous creatures never sub- 
sided into dull slumber till some time in the 
small hours. To their ordinary nocturnal diver- 
sions of dancing, singing, laughing, and whistUng, 
they occasionally added the unparalleled atrocity 
of the accordeon. 

This party afterward came to grief in various 
ways, as all large parties are like to do, and 
all extravagantly gay parties are sure to do, on 
this grand but difficult and trying trip. It is a 
pilgrimage to the most beautiful but awful, holy 
places of Nature, her long secret, inaccessible 
shrines, and should be undertaken with at least 
a decorous seriousness and something of thought- 
ful and intelligent preparation. Cheerfulness is, 
of course, desirable, for one's patience and cour- 
age may be severely taxed all through the ex- 
pedition, and good-humor and good sense are 
absolutely essential to anything like enjoyment 



PILGRIMS FIT FOR THE PILGRIMAGE. 305 

of the trip. At the beginning I would say, Let 
all mere lovers of pleasure, fond of benders 
and unbenders, all bon vivants^ all dainty and 
dandiacal people, all aged, timid, and feeble peo- 
ple, all people without a disciplined imagination, 
keep away from the Yosemite. The entire trip 
will prove to all such a disappointment and a 
drag, weariness, and hardship, and the valley it- 
self a great hollow mockery of wild, vague, ex- 
travagant hopes, — the biggest man-trap of the 
world. When you hear a traveller ask of the 
Yosemite, " Does it pay ? " you may set him 
down as not fit to go there. But to men and 
women of simple minds, to healthy, happy na- 
tures, to brave and reverential souls, in sound, 
unpampered bodies, to " spirits finely touched," 
I would say at the beginning and finally, Come 
to the Yosemite, though you have compassed 
the world all but this ; come for the crowning 
joy of years of pleasant travel ; come and see 
what Nature, high-priestess of God, has prepared 
for them who love her, in the white heights 
and dark depths of the Sierras, in the pro- 
found valley itself, the temple of her ancient 



3o6 CALIFORNIA. 



worship, with thunderous cataracts for organs, 
and silver cascades for choirs, and wreathing 
clouds of spray for perpetual incense, and rocks 
three thousand feet high for altars. 

The stage-ride from Merced over the plain to 
the foot-hills was not tedious, for the road led 
through magnificent golden grain-fields, ready for 
harvest ; but we were not sorry to reach the 
rising ground and the shade of woods. Hornitos 
was our dining-place, — a place to be remembered 
for its nice hotel and nicer landlady. The drive 
from this point to Mariposa is quite delightful, 
the air as you ascend becoming purer, and the 
way more green and flowery. At Mariposa we 
were obliged to wait, with another party of tour- 
ists, some five hours, till coaches should come 
down from White and Hatch's, — the powerful 
Chicago and St. Louis combination having swept 
all before it. The Httle old mining town, so 
long associated with the fame and fortunes of 
General Fremont, has now but a dismal and dilapi- 
dated look, though it is said business is reviv- 
ing there somewhat. 

We quickly looked up all there was to be 



A GRANT MEETING. 307 

seen in the town, and were reduced to extremi- 
ties for amusement. Finally, we observed that 
something unusual was going on in the office of 
a justice of the peace, contiguous to the hotel, — 
something interesting to young Mariposans. In 
fact, preparations were being made in those nar- 
row and awful precincts for an exhibition, by a 
band of " champion minstrels " and a " celebrated 
female contortionist," — not a singer but an acrobat. 
We strolled into the place, and found a few 
benches arranged for the generous public ; a stage 
was partitioned off from the auditorium by a row 
of tallow candles in tin candlesticks, and backed 
by a mysterious green curtain. That stage and the 
vacant hall were somewhat suggestive and tempt- 
ing to the male portion of our party of idle 
tourists, who proceeded to organize a Grant meet- 
ing on the spot. One gentleman, a Boston offi- 
cial, who, though a Grant man, controls a good 
many Democratic votes (he having charge of 
the city jail), made a rousing speech, and was 
followed by other orators. The entire burden of 
the laughter and applause did not fall upon us, 
for the occasion had called into the hall a mot- 



3o8 CALIFORNIA. 



ley little " cloud of witnesses," — two or three 
miners and drovers, several small boys, a Mexi- 
can mule -driver, a Digger Indian, and a China- 
man. A happy unanimity seemed to prevail in 
our meeting. One English traveller, late of the 
army, on whose military stomach the undigested 
Alabama matter evidently set hard, stood proudly 
neutral ; but all the others, from the sheriff of 
Boston and the rich shoe-dealer of Lynn down to 
the small boys of Mariposa, the Chinaman, the 
Greaser, the Digger, and the women, were loyal 
to the administration. Yet, no : there was one 
hardy, grizzly old miner, with a throat like a 
hoisting -shaft and a fist like a quartz - crusher, 
who swung his dilapidated gray hat, which, per- 
haps, once was white, and hurrahed for " honest 
old Horace Greeley." I think Mr. Greeley would 
have been gratified by this brave demonstration 
in the face of an arrogant majority. Even we were 
touched by it, and a hush fell on the gay assem- 
bly ; but I am sorry to have to add that one of 
our party, who had been in the bar-room and 
knew whereof he affirmed, declared the gallant 
minority to be in a state of semi-inebriation. The 



BEFORE THE PERFORMANCE. 309 

minstrels in undress here appeared from behind 
the curtain, greeted us courteously, confided to 
us that they were gentlemen doing a little min- 
strelsy for the adventure of the thing, declared 
for Grant, and solicited the honor of our patronage 
for the evening. 

As we looked every minute for the coaches, we 
dared hold out no hopes to our patriotic friends, 
and we almost grieved, when came still evening on 
and twilight gray, to see them hurrying hither and 
thither to procure for us arm-chairs, which they 
placed before the rude benches provided for the 
common people. I am afraid that, gentle Bohe- 
mians and good Grant men though they were, they 
prayed for our detention at Mariposa that night ; 
and I must confess to an amiable desire to listen 
to their wild warblings and to see their wilder au- 
dience. I even felt that I could smile on the 
modest efforts of the female contortionist, it being 
my principle to encourage woman in entering on 
new careers of fame and emolument, and knowing, 
as I do, to what turns and twists feminine genius 
is driven by cruel disabihties. Strange what an 
interest we all took in the gathering of that small 



310 CALIFORNIA. 



audience. An infant drummer stood at the door, 
and drummed vigorously ; but recruits came in 
slowly. I, having been in the show-business a lit- 
tle myself, was the most sympathetic. I strolled 
carelessly up and down the sidewalk with a friend, 
reconnoitring, returning now and then to the pi- 
azza of the hotel with reports like these : " A force 
of one old miner just marched in," " A woman 
with a baby in arms," " A small detachment of 
boys," "A file of servant-girls/' "A squad of infantry 
commanded by papa and mamma," "A reinforce- 
ment of grandma," " A rear-guard of ranchmen and 
Greasers." 

Our coaches arrived, but it was announced that 
they would not be ready to leave before nine o'clock. 
During that half-hour we could see something of 
the performance. A commutation of half price was 
proffered, and we went in, — that is, a select few 
of us. We declined the reserved seats, and quietly 
sat down on one of the benches among the peo- 
ple. We felt democratic. We fellowshipped the 
rough miner, the ranchman, the Mexican mule- 
driver, even the Greeleyite. We could have tol- 
erated, at a distance, the stern and haughty Dig- 



THE CHAMPION MINSTRELS. 3II 

ger, rightful sovereign of the soil, whose name is 
a misnomer, for he toils not neither does he dig. 
The orchestra chairs we had declined did not re- 
main unoccupied. Eight small girls in their Sun- 
day best entered the hall, with an imposing rustle 
of starched ruffles, came calmly forward, and filed 
into those seats of honor. There was more room 
than their small crinolines could fill ; their little 
feet dangled uncomfortably; but they sat erect, 
stately, and solemn, as so many delegates to a 
female-suffrage convention, gazing intently at the 
curtain throbbing with dark dramatic mysteries. 
At last it was drawn aside, and the minstrels ap- 
peared, bowed graciously, and set to work. Every 
role was duly filled ; there was the aggravating 
conundrum-man, and the proper middle-man, and 
the funny end-man, who played on the tambourine 
with his knees and his heels and his nose, and 
banged it against his head, till he struck fire from 
his wild, rolling eyes. It was curious to watch the 
effect this personage produced on a row of small 
boys just at his left. They watched him with rapt, 
unsmiling eagerness, unconsciously imitating every 
grimace and contortion of his countenance. It was 



312 CALIFORNIA. 



as good as a play to watch the little chaps. As the 
one door of the hall was closed with jealous haste, 
and the shutters of the one window inexorably 
barred against the crowd of impecunious Peris out- 
side, the air within was, to say the least, not bra- 
cing. So, when summoned to our coach, we were 
quite resigned to go, even though the fair star 
of the evening had not appeared. We shall all, 
I am sure, long remember with a gentle human 
interest that melancholy row of minstrels, and their 
serious little audience. 

We had a rather anxious night-ride of twelve 
miles, over a rough road, through streams and gul- 
lies, and along steep, rocky canons, to the hotel of 
White and Hatch, which we did not reach till one 
o'clock in the morning. But the mountain air be- 
gan to tell on us ; and after a brief sleep and a 
good breakfast we were in condition thoroughly 
to enjoy the superb forest ride, up the Chouchilla 
Creek, over the Divide, and down, by a descent of 
nearly three thousand feet, to the end of the stage- 
road, the famous ranch of Clark and Moore, on the 
South Merced, — a lovely, lonely, piny, primitive 
place, with a peculiarly peaceful, restful atmosphere 



THE WAY THE LADIES RIDE. 



pervading it. Here we were received with simple, 
hearty cordiaUty, and proffered the freedom of the 
Sierras and the ranch ; here we were entirely com- 
fortable and very happy throughout our too brief 
stay. The only drawback to the enjoyment cf the 
ladies of our party was the discovery that the 
great Chicago monopoly had, by the means of an 
avajit-coiirier despatched before daylight on a fiery 
mule, secured all the side-saddles, and that we 
must tarry there indefinitely, or take to the Mexi- 
can saddle, and riding en cavalier, both for our 
excursion to the Big Trees and our longer jour- 
ney into the valley. So, with a tear for the mod- 
est traditions of our sex, and a shudder at the 
thought of the figures we should present, we four 
brave women accepted the situation, and, for the 
nonce, rode as woman used to ride in her happy, 
heroic days, before Satan, for her entanglement 
and enslavement, invented trained skirts, corsets, and 
side-saddles. We were fortunately provided with 
strong mountain suits of dark flannel and water- 
proof, which fitted us for this emergency, and for 
any rough climbing we had a fancy for ; and 
that was not a Httle. Well, after a trial of some 
14 



314 



CALIFORNIA. 



fifteen miles the first day and twenty-six the sec- 
ond, we all came to the conclusion that this style 
of riding is the safest, easiest, and therefore the 
most sensible, for long mountain expeditions, and 
for steep, rough, and narrow trails. If Nature in- 
tended woman to ride horseback at all, she doubt- 
less intended it should be after this fashion, other- 
wise we should have been a sort of land variety 
of the mermaid. 

Though the days were warm in that charming 
resting-place, beside the unresting Merced, the 
nights were very cool ; and a bright camp-fire in 
front of the hotel was surrounded till a late hour 
by a circle of tourists, guides, pack-mule men, 
and stage-drivers. We took to reciting ballads and 
telling stories. Of the latter, the most horrible 
and hair-elevating sort were at a premium. There 
was a generous and amiable strife as to who should 
contribute most to the general discomfort, and pro- 
duce the most startling and blood-curdling effects. 
The English ex-officer carried off the palm. His 
story, told in a characteristically cool way, so 
chilled us with horror that we drew closer around 
the camp-fire, and shuddered audibly. Just a little 



THE MARIPOSA GROVE. 315 



way off, under the pines, was a cluster of wig- 
wams, and the camp-fire of the bloody Diggers, — 
howling fitfully that night over the bear-skin couch 
of a venerable savage, said to be over a hundred 
years old, and dying without benefit of clergy. 
Ah 1 how novel and wild and primitive and de- 
lightful it all was I 

By the way, the old Indian did n't die after all 
the ado. He was only testing the affection of his 
heirs. 

The Mariposa grove of Big Trees is about six 
miles from Clark's, up a trail somewhat rough, but 
leading through forests of great beauty. Many of 
the pines along our way were of imposing breadth 
and height, but the first regular Sequoia Gigantca 
we came upon was lying prone upon the earth, 
that had yielded to him, when he fell, almost as 
the sea gives place to the hull of a great ship. 
This mighty recumbent shape, whose battles with 
winds and tempests are over forever, is a majestic 
image of repose and release. What ephemeral 
creatures we seemed beside that scarred and mould- 
ering trunk, on the tender green of whose young 
branches had glistened the dews of the night 



3l6 CALIFORNIA, 



which was the shadow of the most blessed day of 
the world, — the day that dawned in Judcca, under 
the watching of angels and the singing of stars. 
Wild races had passed away under his shadow ; 
he had greatened and towered, waited through 
the slow cycles, and decayed and fallen before the 
spiritual light of that dawning reached the dim 
solitudes of the vast Sierras. 

The largest of these Mariposa trees is The 
Grizzly Giant, but perhaps the most satisfactory 
is The Faithful Couple, — one solid tree at the 
base, but separating at the height of about forty 
feet into two equally fine Sequoias, Some of 
our party saw in it, or them, a type of an un- 
suitable early marriage, followed by divergence 
and divorce ; others saw a type of perfect wed- 
ded life and love, rooted and grounded in 
equality and assimilation, starting as one, but, 
with a higher development, asserting a nobler 
independence and individuality. And so we spec- 
ulated and discussed, while taking our lunch in 
the dual shade of this new -world Baucis and 
Philemon. We visited, I believe, all the groups 
and solitary big trees of the great grove, riding 



MONARCHS OF THE FOREST. 317 

in solemn procession through two hollow trunks, 
— one standing, and one fallen. This proceeding 
undoubtedly gives one the most accurate idea of 
the diameter of the trunks ; but for a full real- 
ization of the height of any one of the finest 
standing trees, of the grand grip it has on the 
earth, there is nothing like lying on your back 
and looking up to its huge, immovable lower 
limbs, up, up, to where its tapering bole and 
highest branches stand above the ordinary green 
level of the forest tree-tops, like the mast and 
spars of a great ship sunken in a shallow sea. 

Grander and grander they grow to you, these 
sombre. Titanic shapes, the longer you linger 
and look ; and you feel that you shall never 
quite pass out from their solemnizing shadow, 
that fell on you like the shadow of the great 
past. Some of the stateliest trees are named for 
our poets. One noble trunk bears on it the 
name of Whittier. So simple yet grand a me- 
morial of his character and genius is most fit- 
ting. Long may it keep his dear memory green. 
Only think, it may have been a middle-aged 
tree in Chaucer's time ! 



3l8 CALIFORIsMA. 



Before we left the haunted forest, we were 
conducted by our pleasant guide to a high, 
beetling cliff, a favorite perch of Bierstadt's, 
from which we had an enchanting view of the 
lovely Merced Valley, with emerald-green meadows 
and waters flashing to the sun ; and what a setting 
were the mountains for the wondrous picture ! 

Early the next morning we were mounted 
and away, eager for the Yosemite, yet reluctant- 
ly taking leave of our hosts, Clark and Moore, 
both very interesting men, mountaineers of the 
best type, — and their kindly household. Mr. 
Moore walked out with us some little distance, 
and blessed us with his pleasant blue eyes, as 
he said good-by. 

Perhaps it is well that I feel the impossibility 
of describing that day's journey, — the wild and 
constantly varying scenery, the strange shrubs 
and flowers, the rocky steeps, the mountain tor- 
rents, the snow-banks, the bogs, over which led 
our narrow trail, the heaven of blue deeps and 
fleecy clouds far above us, the half-way heaven 
of snowy peaks and shining domes. It was a 
wondrous day to live and to remember. 



RIDERS AND GUIDE. 319 

As we jogged along, single file, we formed an 
odd, but not a very picturesque procession. Still, 
we had our dash of color, — one bright, graceful 
object in our moving picture. A lady of our 
party, a fair young girl from Boston, was charm- 
ingly dressed, for effect among the dim woods 
and gray rocks. Her short Yosemite suit was 
black, trimmed with scarlet, a long scarlet sash 
falling at the left side ; to her straw hat was 
attached a blue, floating veil ; her long, boun- 
teous golden hair, all her own, fell in heavy 
braids, tied with blue ribbons. Mounted on a 
white horse, riding with quiet grace, she was a 
perpetual delight to the eye, quite illuminating 
our dull cavalcade. 

We found our guide — Peter Gordon, at your 
service ! a remarkably agreeable young man — 
modest, but not averse to imparting information. 
I kept near him most of the time, plying him 
with questions. His patience was also severely 
tried by our pack-mule, a diminutive animal, so 
built on and about by valises, carpet-bags, and 
bundles, that of the original structure only four 
slender piers and two turrets were visible, from 



20 CALIFORNIA. 



the rear, at least. The poor brute had a mild, 
melancholy face, but was of perverse and erratic 
tendencies. He seized upon every opportunity to 
leave the trail and go off prospecting. When 
brought back, by shouts and blows, to the path 
of rectitude and the Yosemite, his countenance 
always wore a touching look of humility and 
penitence, that seemed to say, 

"Prone to wander, Lord, I feel it." 

We dined, and dined sumptuously, at Paragoy's, 
the new half-way house, set under the pines, in 
the greenest of mountain meadows, with melting 
snows and rushing streams about it, and grand 
white-headed mountains above it. I think tour- 
ists, for whom the delay is possible, should 
spend the night here, and go into the valley 
in the morning. 

Only a few miles from Paragoy's, and we 
were on Inspiration Point, looking down on the 
mighty Mecca of our pilgrimage, — on awful 
depth and vastness, wedded to unimagined 
brightness and loveliness, — a sight that appalled, 
while it attracted ; a sublime terror ; a beautiful 
abyss ; the valley of the shadow of God ! 



THE VALLEY WONDERFUL. 



321 



It seemed to me as I gazed, that here was 
Nature's last, most cunning hiding-place for her 
utmost sublimities, her rarest splendors. Here 
she had worked her divinest miracles with 
water and sunlight, — lake, river, cataract, cas- 
cade, spray, mist, and rainbows by the thousand. 
It was but a little strip of smiling earth to 
look down on, after all ; but ah ! the stupen- 
dousness of its surroundings ! There were arched 
and pillared rocks, so massive, so immense, it 
seemed they might have formed the foundation- 
walls of a continent ; and domes so vast they 
seemed like young worlds rounding out of chaos. 

The trail down from Inspiration Point is steep, 
rough, and somewhat perilous for inexperienced 
riders ; but I prefer it, for its variety, and cool, 
shadowy places, to the shorter new trail by Glacier 
Point, which is wide, even, monotonously good, 
and almost wholly without shade. On our way 
down, our guide pointed out to us a large hollow 
tree fitted up with modern conveniences, in which 
a real hermit had kept house for some years. Dis- 
appointed in love or politics, he retired from the 
world to this rather pubhc spot, where, finally, he 
14* u 



322 CALIFORNIA. 



died by his own hand. He left a large trunk, but 
with little in it. 

This trail enters the valley near the Bridal Veil. 
Beautiful Pohono had dressed herself royally in 
rainbows to receive us. The sight of this fall, in 
the height of its summer glory, and the surpassing 
loveliness of the valley through all the five miles 
that remained for us to ride, charmed away our 
fatigue and restored us to vigor and gayety. We 
forded countless streams, cold as snow and bright 
as sunshine ; we passed through forests of bloom- 
ing azaleas and sweet wild roses and wondrous 
ferns, grand natural parks of oak and cedar, groves 
and avenues of locusts and pines, — indeed, of all 
sorts of trees ; for the variety of foliage in the val- 
ley is wonderful. Much of the way we rode along 
the rapid Merced, a passionate, tumultuous stream, 
pushed on by cataracts. We readily recognized 
all the great rocks, from Watkins's magnificent pho- 
tographs, — the Sentinel, the Three Graces, the 
Cathedral Spires, the Three Brothers, and El 
Capitan, bluff and lordly, shouldering his way to 
the front. At the second hotel — Black's — dear 
friends ran out to meet us with a joyous greeting, 



AN UNEXPECTED SYBARIS. 323 

and we felt at home even before we reached our 
pleasant quarters at the Hutchings House, and re- 
ceived from Mr. Hutchings the hearty, happy wel- 
come he so well knows how to give. 

It was wonderful to us, if not to others, how 
comparatively fresh we were after a day of un- 
precedented fatigue and excitement. There must 
be some magic of stimulus and sustainment in the 
air of the Sierras. A good supper and good com- 
pany further cheered and supported us, and, last 
of all, before sleep, there was for us absolute physi- 
cal rejuvenation in the warm baths of the Cosmo- 
politan Saloon, just opposite our cottage. Here we 
were astonished to find — when we had expected 
to rough it — absolutely sybaritic arrangements, — 
large, bright bathing-rooms ; spacious tubs, exquis- 
itely clean ; a limitless supply of pure, soft water ; 
towels, fine and coarse, in profusion ; delicate 
toilet -soaps ; bottles of bay rum ; Florida water 
and arnica, court-plaster, pins, needles, thread, and 
buttons, for repairing dilapidations ; and late 
Altas and Bulletins for fresh "bustles." The 
floors are all handsomely carpeted, the walls are 
hung with delicate paper, and decorated with pic- 



324 CALIFORNIA. 



tures and mirrors, and cornices are daintily gilded. 
Here, after all our long excursions, hard rides, and 
harder climbs, we took baths of balm, of delicious 
soothing and healing. To find such luxury and 
comfort in the awful sunken fastness of this valley 
seems something absolutely marvelous, the work 
of enchantment ; but the magical agencies have 
been only keen business foresight, energy, pluck, 
perseverance, and pack-mules. 

To future Yosemite pilgrims, I would com- 
mend the brave, benevolent young proprietor of 
this establishment. I hope they will be careful 
accurately to remember his name. It is Smith, — 
John Smith. The pilgrims that have been here 
this year will be in no danger of forgetting it, or 
confounding it with Jones, Brown, or Robinson. 



The Yosemite Falls proper, whose entire descent 
is over twenty-six hundred feet, is immediately in 
front of the Hutchings Hotel, on the north side 
of the valley. Of course, from below, you can see 
nothing of the Yosemite Creek. It looks as though 
it was a cataract from the start, born of the sky 



OPPOSITE THE GREAT FALL. 325 

and the precipice. The roar of this king of water- 
falls, in his grandest times, has a singular dual 
character ; there is the eternal monotone, always 
distinct, though broken in upon by an irregular 
crash and boom, — a sort of gusty thunder. This 
composite sound, so changing and unchanging, 
floods and shakes the air, like the roar of the 
deep sea and the breaking of surf on a rocky 
shore. 

On my first night in the valley, the strangeness 
of my surroundings, a sort of sombre delight that 
took possession of me, would not let .me sleep for 
several hours. Once I rose and looked out, or 
tried to look out. The sky was clouded ; it seemed 
to me the stars drew back from the abyss. 
It was filled with night and sound. I could not 
see the mighty rocks that walled us in, but a 
sense of their shadow was upon me. There was 
in the awe I felt no element of real dread or 
fear, but it was thrilled by fantastic terrors. I 
thought of Whitney's theory of the formation of 
the great pit, by subsidence. What if it should 
take another start in the night, and settle a mile 
or two with us, leaving the trail by which we 



326 CALIFORNIA. 



descended, dangling in the air, and the cataracts 
all spouting away, with no outlet ! But in the 
morning the jolly sun peered down upon us, 
laughing, as much as to say, " There you are, 
are you ? " and the sweet, cool winds dipped down 
from the pines and the snows, the great fall 
shouted and danced all the way down his stu- 
pendous rocky stairway, the river, and overflowed 
meadows rippled and flashed with immortal glee. 
It seems to me that darkness is darker and light 
lighter in the Yosemite than anywhere else on 
earth. 

Yet, in the midst of its utmost brightness and 
beauty, you are more or less oppressed with a 
realization of some sudden convulsion of nature, 
that here rent the rocks asunder, that shook the 
massive mountain land till the bottom dropped 
out ; or of the mighty force of drifting, driving 
glaciers, grinding, carving, just ploughing their way 
down from the High Sierra, leaving this stu- 
pendous furrow behind them. Somehow you feel 
that Nature has not done with this place yet. 
Such a grand, abandoned workshop invites her 
to return. The stage of this great tragic theatre 



THE FORTRESS OF THE GODS. 327 

of the elements waits, perhaps, for some terrible 
afterpiece. But it may be a comedy after all, — 
horse-railroads and trotting-tracks, hacks and hand- 
organs, Saratoga trunks and croquet parties, ele- 
vators running up the face of El Capitan, the 
Domes plastered over with circus bills and adver- 
tisements of " Plantation Bitters." 

There is here, at first, a haunting sense of im- 
prisonment, though on a grand scale, of course. 
You feel like a magnificent felon, incarcerated in 
the very fortress of the gods. 

The outside world seems very far away, and 
even recent events grow indistinct. There is an 
impertinent telegraph-wire that comes into the 
valley, but I fancy it does little business. There 
is no regular mail, and few letters are written 
or received. As for newspapers, I found only 
one or two in the hotel parlor. They told all 
about the snow blockade. We hardly knew Sun- 
day when it came round. We were dropped into 
the bosom of Mother Earth, out of the old life 
of thought and feeling, out of business, fashion, 
and politics. We could hardly tell whether it 
was Horace Greeley, or Horatio Seymour, or a 



328 CALIFORNIA. 



man by the name of Davis, who was nominated 
at Cincinnati. The news of the Philadelphia nom- 
inations came to us incidentally, via Honolulu, 
that is, we were told it by Consul Mattoon, just 
from the islands. This sense of isolation inclines 
people to be social and kindly. Petty convention- 
alities are left outside the grand walls. Tourists 
who have not been introduced, fall into conversa- 
tion with each other in an easy, fraternal way, 
which I have not found the fashion anywhere 
else in democratic America. It is a pleasant 
feature of life in the valley. I found it impos- 
sible to work here, or even to talk fluently or 
forcibly on what I knew about the Yosemite. 
The theme mastered me. I noticed that there 
were few singing-birds about, and was told by 
an old guide that they, with most animals, 
were afraid of the valley. Poetic thoughts and 
gay fancies seem struck with a like fear. You 
are for a time mentally unnerved ; but you feel 
that in your powerlessness you are gaining 
power ; in your silence, more abundant expres- 
sion. 

The vague sense of oppression and imprison- 



GENERAL IMPRESSIONS. 329 

ment I have alluded to, doubtless often drives 
nervous tourists from the valley after so brief a 
visit that it must seem to them ever after like 
a wild, troubled dream of vast precipices and 
domes, of dizzy points, of booming cataracts and 
roaring rapids, of toiling up and plunging down 
steep trails, on sore-backed mules and bucking 
bronchos. In fact, the valley, in the height of 
its short season, is a confused scene of hurry, 
pushing, and scrambling. Horses, mules, mustangs, 
and donkeys are burdened and goaded, and driven 
to the last point of endurance, and too often 
beyond. "All creation groaneth and tmvelleth** 
in the Yosemite. There is a vast deal to be 
seen hereabouts, yet none of the great points 
are very easy of access. There is no royal road 
to them ; but if tourists who are strong enough, 
would give themselves a reasonable amount of 
time, they would see everything better by going on 
foot and sparing the wretched animals who now 
stagger under them in mute agony, and, per- 
haps, execrate the picturesque in their meek souls. 
Some unhappy people you see doing all the sights, 
driving through all the excursions, with a sort 



330 CALIFORNIA. 



of gloomy desperation, as though obeying the in- 
junction, " See the Yosemite and die," or under 
a contract to return to San Francisco on the 
very next Friday and be hanged. 

Aside from the multitude of tourists from all 
parts of the world, constantly coming and going, 
there is a curious and picturesque variety of races 
in the valley. Mexicans, Chinamen, negroes, and 
Indians, Diggers of rather the better class, who 
seem peculiarly to belong to the wild landscape, 
sad, though so lovely. The few buildings in the 
valley are of rather a primitive and temporary 
character, and, with the exception of the sump- 
tuous Cosmopolitan Saloon, very simply appointed. 
Of the hotel-keepers, Mr. Hutchings offers the most 
ample accommodations, having three good buildings, 
comfortably furnished. His caravansery continues 
to be the most popular, though there are travellers 
who prefer the lower hotels, from gross consider- 
ations of appetite. It must be confessed, even by 
his warmest friends, that Mr. Hutchings is not an 
epicurean caterer, — not "high-toned on grub," to 
use the expression of an indignant CaUfornia land- 
lady. I do not myself think that it was in the 



MR. HUTCHINGS. 33I 

purpose and plan of the Divine economy that 
Hatchings should keep a hotel. There are better 
things which he could do better. But the man is 
already historical ; his name is wedded to that of 
his beloved Yosemite, and it is not in the power 
of jealous rivalry or legislative enactments to di- 
vorce them. He is the recognized fountain-head 
of Yosemite lore, such as intelligent tourists hke 
to get at, and, when from his burdensome cares 
and bewildering worriments he gets a little time for 
conversation, is a very interesting and picturesque 
talker. 

Our first little expedition in the valley was with 
Mr. Hutchings, to his garden and grounds, on the 
north side of the valley, in the neighborhood of the 
falls. The Merced and Yosemite had so overflowed 
the meadows, that, just beyond the bridge, we were 
obliged to take a boat, and be rowed over by our 
host, and a young man by the name of Lo. We 
were told that such high water so late in the sea- 
son, was quite exceptional. By the way, I have 
noticed that everything unpleasant, or undesirable 
in California is "exceptional." 

As he was to return for a couple of other friends, 



332 CALIFORNIA. 



waiting on the bridge, Mr. Hutchings sent us three 
pilgrims (we know who) on through the wicket- 
gate, and directly into his fine strawberry patch. 
We justified his trust, and partook generously of 
the delicious fruit, feeling that he should be en- 
couraged in the culture of such delicacies in this 
wild spot. We would a little rather have had them 
gathered for us, though, for the sun was " exception- 
ally" hot. On a flowery bank, under a noble oak, 
we soon sought rest and shade. Here, where a 
delicious breeze reached us, we revelled in the un- 
speakable loveliness of the scene. Above, below, 
on every side, was the fullness of beauty and life, 
— light, color, fragrance, graceful motion, grand re- 
pose. Here, while watching the Fall of Falls, the 
steady plunge of the great central column, the 
ever-varying swing and sway of the silvery mist 
that encircled it like a garment, the peculiar shoots 
of tiny side-streams and jets coming down like 
arrows or rockets, — passing beautiful; here, while 
listening to the many-voiced shout of the leaping 
waters, the shout that speaks alternately of joy, of 
dread, of defiance, and despair, we heard also, from 
the grave lips of the poet himself, Joaquin Miller's 



POETIC CONTAGION. ^^^ 

" Yosemite Song, " — a poem which almost expresses 
the inexpressible. Perhaps the fine frenzy was 
catching; perhaps we are never too old to catch 
it : certain it is, that one of the other three pil- 
grims, glowing with a mild poetic fervor, here took 
the word and said, "Ah, fellow -pilgrims, here, 
where every sense is enthralled with beauty and 
sublimity, where 

* The wild cataract leaps in glory ' ; 

here, with the tremble of its melodious thunder in 
the air ; here, in this summer, enchanted among 
eternal snows, this smiling valley, lapped in frown- 
ing sublimities ; here, amid the shine and shimmer 
and shade and fruitage and fragrance, — is Para- 
dise ! " 

As if to make the words true, to render the 
Sunday picture scripturally correct, just at this 
point the Serpent started up from the grass and 
the flowers, and came boldly into the path, near 
the gate through which our host and his friends 
were just entering the garden. It was an "excep- 
tional " rattlesnake ! Ah ! if the " grand old gar- 
dener" of Eden had served the father of serpents 



334 



CALIFORNIA. 



and lies as Mr. Hatchings served this rash in- 
truder, — mashed his head and cut off his rattles, 
— what a different world we should have had of 
it ! Then, every first family could have had a Yo- 
semite to itself, — a private Paradise, with no angel 
of expulsion to drive us down the valley and up 
the trail. Somehow, after that little snake inci- 
dent, we did n't poetize much, nor run at large 
about the grounds, for fear of meeting the mourn- 
ing widow. It was time to go to dinner. 

Among our visitors in the evening was Mr. 
Muir, the young Scottish mountaineer, student, 
and enthusiast, who has taken sanctuary in the 
Yosemite, who stays by the variable valley with 
marvellous constancy, who adores her alike in 
her fast, gay summer life and solemn autumn 
glories, in her winter cold and stillness, and in 
the passion of her spring floods and tempests. 
Not profoundest snows can chill his ardor, not 
earthquakes can shake his allegiance. Mr. Muir 
talks with a quiet, quaint humor, and a simple 
eloquence which are quite delightful. He has a 
clear blue eye, a firm, free step, and marvellous 
nerve and endurance. He has the serious air 



A GUIDE, PHILOSOPHER, AND FRIEND. 335 

and unconventional ways of a man who has been 
much with Nature in her grand, solitary places. 
That tourist is fortunate who can have John 
Muir for a guide in and about the valley. He 
will thus see sights not set down in the Yel- 
verton chronicles, learn facts which not even 
the most careful student of Olive Logan has 
come at. 

The scene at the hotel, on the morning of 
my second day, was something memorable. The 
grounds and piazzas swarmed with tourists and 
guides, all demanding animals at once to make 
the excursions to Glacier Point, or the Vernal 
and Nevada Falls. Not only were there the 
Hutchings House people in the crowd, but 
strangers from the other hotels, frantically dash- 
ing about, calling for horses like so many Rich- 
ards. Perhaps, in his emergency, Richard would 
have come down to a mule ; it is certain that 
some of these gentlemen were glad to, after 
swearing as he did, and bribing the hostler as 
he did n't. There is always more or less trouble 
here about horses, as they are not kept up, but 
turned loose at night in the wild pastures, and 



336 CALIFORNIA. 



have to be lassoed in the morning by Indians, 
who are not remarkably early risers. This 
morning the demand greatly exceeded the sup- 
ply. All of us, guests and interlopers, "went 
for" Mr. Hutchings. Unhappily, the half-distract- 
ed proprietor did n't know the sheep from the 
goats. He frequently gave the wrong man the 
right horse. He did his best at omnipresence 
and omnipotence ; but nobody he wanted to see 
could find him at the right moment, and nobody 
he especially wanted to serve could he do any- 
thing for. He was here, he was there, he was 
nowhere. We all mobbed him, and we all missed 
him, — poor, kindly, harassed, illusive Mr. Hutch- 
ings ! 

Out of the difficulties of the horse question 
grow minor difficulties and disputes, which break 
up many a pleasant party in the valley. Ours 
went to pieces very gently that very morning. 
It was inevitable disintegration. The more for- 
tunate part, who got horses early, went to Gla- 
cier Point ; others went to Nevada Falls and 
had a splendid dinner, and in the midst of it 
were called out of doors by the thunder of a 



EXCURSIONS. 337 



great stone avalanche, which came down from 
the Cap of Liberty and almost buried the hotel. 
It covered them with dust, and they thought 
it was an earthquake, or the day of judgment, 
and would n't have missed it for anything. The 
rest of us finally straggled off one by one for 
the Bridal Veil, some on foot, some on a gal- 
lop, — the name we politely applied to a Yo- 
• Semite animal's best speed, — a sort of distracted 
walk. Some of us found the place, others got 
lost. The party that got lost had the lunch- 
basket. 

The Bridal Veil is my favorite Yosemite cata- 
ract. There is for me a tender, retrospective 
charm in the name. Just opposite to the Bridal 
Veil is the lovely little trickling cascade called 
the Virgin's Tears. Had the sight of the float- 
ing, flouting Veil anything to do with that 
lachrymose condition ? We, who reached the 
Veil, Hngered about it for hours, — read and 
slept, botanized and shouted poetry in each 
other's ears. When the rainbows came, we went 
far up into the very heart of the splendor. We 
could have jumped through the radiant hoops 
15 



338 CALIFORNIA. 



like circus performers. Of course, we got well 
soaked with the spray, and had to hang our- 
selves out on the rocks to dry. Then we mount- 
ed and rode down the valley and some dis- 
tance up the trail, to meet the travellers coming 
in from Clark's. As they came in sight, headed 
by the patient pack-mule and our old guide, 
Peter Gordon, it was with a certain agreeable 
sense of proprietorship and patronage that we 
welcomed them to the valley. They looked ja- 
ded, travel-stained, and very sober ; but we 
cheerfully assured them that the worst was over, 
that they had the Bridal Veil before them 
(though they were rather late for the rainbows), 
and the glorious valley, at least five good miles 
of it, and a dozen or so fine streams to ford, 
very full, and only a few bogs to cross. Yes, 
the hotels were crowded, but they could get 
in somewhere, doubtless, if they were willing to 
rough it, take up with half-rations, and beds 
on the floor for a while. It was pleasant to 
be able to cheer them up a bit. In the late 
twilight, after supper, I found two or three 
gentlemen of this party sitting forlornly on the 



EQUESTRIANISM. 339 



hotel Steps, with their modest Httle parcels be- 
side them, like so many foundlings. Mr. Hutch- 
ings provided for them in some mysterious way, 
but they soon disappeared from our midst. They 
endured but for a day. 

As a rider a little difficult to please, I tried 
many experiments while in the valley. I rode 
Mr. Miller's horse, and one of Mr. Muir's. They 
were my Sunday best. I drew largely on Mr. 
Hutchings's variegated stud. I see-sawed from 
horse to mule. I aspired to the refined precari- 
ousness of the side-saddle, and backslid to the 
masculine security of the Mexican saddle, with 
its high pommel and its long, roomy stirrups, 
which give one such a certain hold on the brute. 
However mounted, I found all my old wild prac- 
tice in horseback-riding tell in the valley, as 
nowhere else, in a comfortable, almost unconscious 
confidence, that left me free to enjoy all I saw 
and to see all there was to be seen. Many an 
unhappy lady we saw utterly and anxiously ab- 
sorbed by the spiritless but trustworthy animal 
she rode. The falls she looked for were not 
waterfalls, the ears of her mule could shut out 



340 CALIFORNIA. 



the grandest prospect. It is important to be well 
mounted, on the expedition to Glacier Point, as 
the trail, though wide and even, is a little fright- 
ful, winding as it does almost up the face of 
Sentinel Rock, and having many dizzy points 
and sharp turns. You have to pay a dollar toll 
for going over this trail ; but it does not seem 
unreasonable, as a temporary tax at least, when 
you see the amount of labor and expense and 
the enterprise and courage required to execute 
this astonishing work. Glacier Point is on the 
south side of the valley, three thousand seven 
hundred feet above the meadows. It is the 
point that gives you the finest comprehensive view 
of the valley, especially of its upper waterfalls, 
canons, and rocks, with vast views of the High Si- 
erra. All the great heights were pointed out to 
us, — Mount Hoffman, Mount Lyell, Mount Dana, 
Mount Clark, and Mount Starr King. This last 
had for us a tender human interest. It seemed 
a most fitting monument of a noble, aspiring life 
and a broad, well-balanced character, being a sin- 
gularly symmetrical cone, steep and smooth, a 
shape grandly massive, but not heavy. It had no 



GLACIER POINT. 341 



clouds, no snows on its summit ; it was bathed 
in sunlight, like his beautiful beloved memory. 
It stands up among the hoary, scarred old moun- 
tains in eternal youth and strength, like his un- 
worn and steadfast soul. Its summit, though so 
undefended by sharp peaks and threatening gla- 
ciers, is absolutely inaccessible, like the sacred 
heights of his nature, known only of God. 

The vast view from Glacier Point is the despair 
of poetry and art. Certainly its grandeur can 
never be compassed by the grandest sweep of 
human language. Its divine loveUness floats for- 
ever before the mind, in smiling, radiant defiance. 
It is glory that mtist be seen ; it is sublimity 
that must be felt ; it is the " exceeding great 
reward" that must, be toiled for. Yet I would 
not care to linger long here, or on the loftier 
Sentinel Dome, near by. These heights supernal, 
toward which the stars stoop, against which the 
heavens trail their garments, are awesome places. 
How dreadful to be alone, up here, at night, 
with the lower world all drowned in darkness ! 
Some of us proposed to stay and see the sunset 
from the point, but the guides, more practical 



342 CALIFORNIA. 



than poetical gentlemen, overruled us, fortunately 
perhaps, for iion facilis est descensus into the 
Yosemite. 

So ended my third day. 



Perhaps the most delightful excursion it is pos- 
sible to take in the valley is the one to the 
Vernal and Nevada Falls. The trail to these, up 
the Merced Canon, crosses the beautiful Illilouette 
River and several small, sparkHng streams, pierces 
the green depths of fragrant woods, winds among 
the massive rocks, under mighty mountain walls, 
passes a glorious succession of cascades and rap- 
ids, and finally leads you out into full view of the 
grand, green, columnar masses of the Vernal and 
majestic white splendor of the Nevada. Both 
these falls, and the cascades between them, have 
a singularly joyous look ; they leap and tumble, 
hurry- skurry, over the rocks, as though glad to 
escape from the cold, gray mountain solitudes, 
and the dull pressure and sullen push of snows, 
out into freedom, down through kindling sunhght, 



VERNAL AND NEVADA FALLS. 343 

to the bosom of beauty and peace, in the fair 
valley land. 

Across the Merced, — the ubiquitous Merced, — 
between the two falls, and right under the old 
Cap of Liberty, called by the Indians Mahta, is 
a summer hotel, well kept, neat, and comfortable. 
Here we concluded to spend the night, in order 
thoroughly to see the two falls, — the only way 
it can be done. All the afternoon was spent 
beside the cascades and rapids and about the 
beautiful Vernal. This is the only waterfall in 
the valley which has any color. One portion of 
it is of the brightest emerald. There is on the 
edge of the precipice a singular parapet of 
granite, behind which you can stand and look 
down four hundred feet into a dim world of 
mist and spray. At one side of the falls there 
is an easy stairway, leading down to lovely, ferny 
grottos, and little hanging-gardens, kept green 
and cool by the perpetual baptism of the spray. 

The night came on cold and wild, with clouds 
and wind and fitful moonlight. The guides built 
a camp-fire on * the rocks before the hotel, which 
we gathered about, and roasted our faces while 



344 CALIFORNIA, 



our backs were shivering. The only chance of 
comfort would have been in continually revolving, 
by some sort of spit arrangement, — to turn 
one's self was too much like work; yet we were 
very merry, — not at all put down by little dis- 
comforts and great subUmities. Mr. Muir built 
large fires down by the river. The effects of 
the red gleams and wavering flashes among the 
rocks and dark pines, and of the reflections on 
the rapids, were marvellously picturesque. We 
slept well that night, to the grand lullaby of the 
cataracts, only disturbed by the fall of a small 
avalanche from the Cap of Liberty, and a mild 
earthquake shock. Old Mahta is given to ava- 
lanching, and vagrant earthquakes to prowling 
round the valley. The latter do little harm, — 
they knock and run. When I felt this one 
gently shaking my bedstead, I recognized the 
peculiar jog I had felt at Sacramento and San 
Francisco, and, familiarized with subterranean 
visitors, the irreverent words of Hamlet occurred 
to me : — 

" Old mole ! can'st work i' the earth so fast ? " 

A climb up a steep, rough foot-trail to the 



SUBLIMITY AND SANDWICHES. 345 

top of Nevada Falls was the morning's gallant 
undertaking. It was real work, though full 
of rare, hearty enjoyment. In the river, above 
the falls, is a picturesque, rocky island, near the 
shore. By crossing on a bridge of one log over 
the rapids of the small side fall, we reached 
this island, and secured the finest near view 
of the grand cataract, — one of the greatest in 
the world. From a projecting ledge, a sort of 
Table Rock, we were able to follow its mad 
leap down seven hundred feet, to look straight 
into the chasm where it was deepest and dark- 
est, into the vortex of swirling, wrestling, fight- 
ing waters, — a mighty agony of contending 
forces. Turning from that image of eternal 
unrest to the serene blue sky and the steadfast 
white domes, we stored our brains with pictures 
of sublimity unimaginable, steeped our souls in 
beauty inexpressible, and then — we went to 
lunch. 

Mr. Muir thinks he finds in this particular 

region abundant evidence of the truth of the 

theory he holds of the formation of the valley 

by glacial action. At the falls, and on our way 

15* 



346 CALIFORNIA. 



down, he pointed out rocks showing, as he 
thought, distinct marks of the drift. Professor 
Whitney, the eminent State geologist, scouts at 
the idea of glaciers "sawing out these vertical 
walls," carving the spires and "turning" the 
domes, and is as certain of " subsidence " as 
though he " was there all the while." But he 
comes whose right it is to decide all glacier 
questions, Louis Agassiz. If he claims the val- 
ley, the subsiders will have to subside. I have 
endeavored to maintain a calm neutrality, though 
feeling, of course, the tremendous issues involved 
in the dispute. Forever unforgetable the last views 
we had of the two cataracts from the trail 
below the hotel, on our way down into the val- 
ley ! They were absolutely resplendent in the 
afternoon sunlight, each plunging joyously into 
piles of welcoming rainbows, — a vortex of splen- 
dors. They were clothed in glory as a garment. 
The ride on the lower trail was even more 
charming than it had been in the morning. In 
the deep, sweet-ferny wood the sunset glories 
were exquisitely tempered by foliage of every 
shade of green ; the air was delicious with the 



LUMBER. 



347 



fragrance of great white buckeye flowers, creamy 
azaleas and wild roses and lilacs. Then there 
was the jubilant singing of the swift mountain 
streams, broken into, now and then, by the deep 
bass of cascades. A brief, rough mule ride; but 
what a joy it was, and is, and ever shall be ! 



My sixth day was a deliciously lazy day, spent 
mostly in rowing and in strolling and idling 
about with a lovely friend over the river, and 
beside the Lower Yosemite Falls. On our way 
we passed the saw-mill that furnishes all the 
lumber used in the valley, and, after our fashion, 
stopped for a little chat with the workmen we 
found grappling the great logs and putting 
them through. There is a law prohibiting the 
felling of live trees in the valley, and all these, 
we were told, had fallen in the natural way, — 
were doubly dead trees. But they looked sin- 
gularly sound and plump, as though they had 
died a sudden death, — not, I am sure, from 
heart disease; and I fear no "crowner" sat on 
them. One of the men, who was opposed to 



348 CALIFORNIA. 



the anti-chopping law (I suspect he was a 
Greeley man), said, speaking as an unprejudiced 
sawyer, " I think the pines, at least, ought to 
be excepted ; they might all be cut down ; they 
are no ornament to the valley." 

In the evening, about sunset, I rode down to 
Black's, for a little gossip with some gay friends. 
A woman cannot dwell in sublimities forever. 
On the way, I drew rein, as I frequently did, 
beside a little sheet of water, an overflowed 
meadow, to look at a wonderful reflection, in 
the clear, still water, of the Yosemite Falls, the 
neighboring rocks, and the sky. I was presently 
joined by a rough but kindly stranger, who, 
with the pleasant freedom of the valley, asked 
what I was " lookin' at } " " At the reflections 
there," I said, pointing to the wondrous pic- 
ture of waterfall, precipice, and sky. He peered 
down in a puzzled way for a moment, then 
started back, as though fearful of falling into 
the abysmal blue, and exclaimed, " Well, now, 
I 've been in and about this valley, in the pack- 
mule business, for ten years, but never noticed 
that thar before. Why, it 's as good as the real 
thing ! " 



SIMULATED SAVAGERY. 349 

How many such people we meet, men and 
women, who, " having eyes, see not " ! If the 
sky were full of tilting comets, they would ask, 
" Why stand ye gazing up into heaven ? " I 
doubt many a pack mule, since the time of the 
prophet Balaam, has seen more than his master. 

There was a grand aboriginal entertainment 
before the hotel that evening, — a horse-race and 
a dance of Diggers. A "war-dance," they called 
it ; and, by means of burnt cork and wild berry- 
juice, bunches of turkey-feathers and tags of 
bear-skin, they had managed to impart a feeble 
ferocity to their meek, moony faces, — a faint 
touch of barbarism to their stunted, slouching, and 
pantalooned figures. But there is more of insolent 
cruelty in one slow, sullen glance from old Red 
Cloud's bloodshot eyes than in the concentrated 
savagery of the whole Digger tribe. Squaws 
and pappooses followed the festive braves in gig- 
gling adoration. One tattooed princess, resplendent 
in a yellow calico robe and a tinsel coronet, 
passed round the hat. It was doubtless a poor 
show to travellers who had been in the wild 
Territories, where there are Indians that are 



350 CALIFORNIA 



Indians ; who have seen war-dances where the 
dancers were armed with real tomahawks, and 
decorated with real scalps ; but, after our show, 
I was quite willing to ride home through the 
dim moonlight alone ; glad to be alone with the 
shadow and the shine, the fine silence and the 
great sound. 

On the seventh day we found our Gospel 
privileges, which were already not inconsiderable, 
increased by the arrival of a number of clergy- 
men, — distinguished divines, but (I mean no ir- 
reverence) good fellows for all that. They had 
evidently retained on entering the ministry, 
among their reserved rights, a good deal of hu- 
man nature, some practical sense, and a healthy 
jollity. At table they were especially merry, 
and laughed generously at little jests ; indeed, 
it was pleasant to see how far a very little joke 
would go with them, and how long it would run. 
They tossed it about tenderly, like good boys 
playing " throw-and-catch " with a Sunday-school 
book. The morning's programme was a visit to 
the Yosemite Falls on the north side, and a 
ride up the valley to El Capitan. I was with 



A REVEREND RIDER. 351 

a charming family party of old friends, with 
whom I was to make the overland journey 
home ; but we were joined by several other 
tourists, making a large cavalcade. The Church 
was out in force. During the latter part of the 
ride, where the trail widened into a good road, 
and there was a chanoe for a gallop, and my 
old propensity for hard riding came over me, I 
suddenly found myself neck and neck with a 
clergyman, one of the gravest and gentlest of 
the new-comers, and an eloquent and eminent 
D. D. of Philadelphia, — a city as renowned for 
its preachers as it is proverbial for its lawyers, 
favored, indeed, both by the law and the Gospel. 
I should be only too proud to find myself in 
this friend's edifying company any day ; but I 
doubt if he would be wilUng to ride through 
Fairmount Park, where he might meet his re- 
spectable parishioners, with his Yosemite com- 
panion, dressed as she was, mounted as she was, 
on that golden Saturday. Here was a clergy- 
man of reverent, poetic spirit, whose ideas of 
this beautiful world were not darkened by the 
traditional curse of Eden, — one who could find 



352 CALIFORNIA. 



" Books in the running brooks, 
Sermons in stones, and good in everything." 

For him there was a "whole body of divinity" 
in El Capitan, as was shown by the reverential 
glow, the devout delight of his face, when he looked 
up the three thousand three hundred feet of 
broad, vertical rock from the vast mass of debris 
(which at a little distance attracts no notice) at 
the base. We were too much impressed by 
the grand aspect of this stupendous rock as 
an image of Eternal Majesty and strength, to see 
or seek in it any likeness to anything human ; 
but what is called " the Old Captain " was after- 
wards pointed out to us, — a face and figure dis- 
tinct enough, but not as fine by far as the Shake- 
speare at Lake Tahoe. On our way back, we were 
called on to pay fifty cents toll for passing a crazy 
old bridge, which we had to eke out by some rods 
of fording and floundering. Almost every excur- 
sion you take here subjects you to a tax of this 
sort ; you cannot say of the valley, that the half 
has not been tolled. If the bridges and trails 
were in better condition, one would not be dis- 



A SUNDAY MORNING. 353 

posed to grumble, except to show people that 
one has travelled. 

In the afternoon, the Bridal Veil again, and the 
rainbows, of which we found a full variety. That 
was a memorable last ride we had up to our 
hotel, through the lingering sunset. The gilding 
of the Cathedral Spires and Sentinel Rock was 
something marvellous to behold. The valley was 
just brimmed with tender, tremulous, aureate light. 
We felt that we had hardly seen it till then ; 
but so we thought every latest time we beheld it. 
The beauty, the splendor, the height, the depth, 
the impression of infinite variety, grow upon you 
continually. 



On Sunday morning it was announced at 
breakfast that there were to be divine services' in 
the parlor of the Hutchings House. Couriers had 
been despatched the night before to the other 
hotels, with the glad tidings that Rev. Dr. Or- 
miston, of New York, was to preach ; and at the 
usual hour for such gatherings in the world out- 
side, a good-sized congregation was brought to- 



354 CALIFORNIA. 



gether in that wild little inside world, without 
the aid of "the church-going bell." By the way, 
I wonder some enterprising Yankee doesn't put 
one up on Cathedral Rock, if only for the sake 
of collecting toll. We tried to do the decorous 
thing on that occasion. Mr. Hutchings put on a 
"biled" shirt and a coat. I donned a long black 
skirt and a new paper collar. I think I must 
have looked respectable, for the minister himself 
did me the honor to invite me to lead the sing- 
ing. This was an exquisite, though unconscious, 
joke on the part of Dr. Ormiston. Without me 
that portion of the exercises partook of the na- 
ture of a failure : with me it would have been 
a disaster. That was an eloquent discourse and 
an orthodox, given in a round and resonant voice ; 
but over against us, just across the valley, there 
was a grand old preacher, thundering forth from 
a pulpit of immemorial rock, his long, white beard 
waving in the wind. He preached out of Eternity, 
into Eternity, and finally preached the good 
Doctor down. 

After service I felt incHned to seek the "dim 
religious light" of Nature's minster of rocks and 



MIRROR LAKE. 355 



woods ; to tell the truth, I mounted, and hurried 
away to Mirror Lake, whither some friends had 
preceded me. I keenly enjoyed my solitary ride 
on that cold, cloudy, gusty day ; and though the 
way was new to me, I had but one little ad- 
venture. As I was riding rapidly up a part of 
the trail which wound around a boulder as big 
as a m©eting-house, I came suddenly on a mounted 
Indian, wildly clad and gorgeously decorated, 
for Sunday, doubtless. I had heard no sound : 
perhaps Indian ponies have a stealthy tread ; 
certain it is that all horses but Indian horses 
are afraid of Indians. Mine shied, reared, and, 
for a moment, was badly demoralized. Now, if 
I had been perched on a side-saddle, of the nar- 
row, " double-decker " sort used in the valley, 
there would probably have been a tragedy, with 
no one but the savage left to tell the tale. 

Mirror Lake is a pretty little sheet of water, 
about two miles up the canon of the Tenaya Creek. 
It reflects with marvellous accuracy, morning and 
evening, the grand heights above it ; that is, when 
the current of the stream passing through it is 
not too strong. Some tourists, who have "done" 



356 CALIFORNIA. 



Europe, but will never have done with it, on 
visiting this modest little lake with great ex- 
pectations, have been heard to denounce it as 
" a sell." But the lake smiles on as placidly 
as ever. She never set up for a Como, or a 
Maggiore ; but she bears in her bosom the im- 
ages of precipices and domes such as those fine 
Italian lakes never dreamed of. 

Here I found my friends and the lunch wait- 
ing for me. From here, under the guidance of 
Mr. Muir, we set out on a tramp to find Te- 
naya Falls and the cascades of Porcupine Creek, 
— beauties blocked and curtained away from or- 
dinary tourists by great masses of rock and 
thick foliage. We passed first through a lovely 
piece of woodland along the creek ; grassy and 
flowery it was, with great patches of wonderful 
ferns. It was the sweetest, peacefullest place I 
had found anywhere within Yosemite bounds. 
There was something so deliciously and dream- 
ily poetic about it we named it the " Enchanted 
Forest." It might have been the wood of " Mid- 
summer Night's Dream " or a strip of the For- 
est of Arden. Through this was, of course, 



TENAYA FALLS. 357 



pleasant, easy travelling, or loitering ; but beyond, 
every step was a toil and a pull. We had to 
creep up and slide down boulders ; cross streams 
on logs and slippery stones ; to jump like the 
goat and climb like the bear, — at least Mr. Muir 
was pleased to compare me as a climbist, to 
that agile animal. I thought it best to take the 
remark as a compliment, and, in return, paid a 
tribute to his transcendent climbing : it was the 
best proof I had ever seen of the truth of 
the Darwinian theory. On account of the high 
water, we could not, with all our super- or sub- 
human efforts, get very near to the beautiful, 
lonely falls of the Tenaya, but we did get quite 
close to the more beautiful cascades of the 
fretful Porcupine. These come down the steep 
narrow canon in a lovely, winding procession, 
dazzling to behold. Clad in foam, sparkling with 
spray, like fine lace lit with diamonds, they look, 
as they leap down those steps of light, strange- 
ly glad and exulting, full of frolic and passion, 
reminding one of the naiads of Mysia, who 
stole young Hylas from Hercules, and ran away 
with him. This is the way they ran, this is 



358 CALIFORNIA. 



the way they laughed. Taken as a whole, this, 
I think, would be pronounced the most radiant- 
ly lovely of all the Yosemite waterfalls ; and 
yet what a shy, secluded little savage it is ! To 
look on her face, you must fight your way 
through brake and brier, as the fairy Prince 
fought his way to the Enchanted Palace of the 
Sleeping Beauty. You have to brave perils of 
poison-oak, tumbles and bruises, torn clothes, wet 
feet, and scratched faces. This should not be. A 
good trail should be made to both the falls and 
the cascades, — sights which alone would, if in 
Europe, call crowds of tourists to their vicinity. 
I take occasion to say that several new trails 
are needed in and about the valley, and that the 
old ones call loudly for reconstruction ; and I 
cannot think that California, into whose care 
Congress gave these wonderful places, so long 
God's inviolate preserves, is fully justifying that 
noble trust. A generous fund from the treasury 
of the generous State should be set aside by 
every Legislature for Yosemite improvements. 
But whether the fund be large or small, the 
commissioners, certain magnificent and myste- 



A DAMAGED CATARACT. 359 

rious gentlemen of whom you hear much but 
see nothing in the valley, — should look to it that 
the money be judiciously expended. I was told 
that the sum of five hundred dollars had been 
or was to be allowed a certain " cute " Yankee, 
in payment for the extraordinary enterprise of 
cutting off the pretty little side cascade of the 
Nevada, by means of a dam, and turning all 
the water into the great cataract. " Fixing the 
falls," he calls the job of tinkering one of 
God's masterpieces. There is a chance to pun 
on " the deep damnation of that cutting off" ; 
but I forbear. All the rights of toll-gate keep- 
ers should be bought up, and all the trails and 
bridges be absolutely free. This would be not only 
the most liberal, but the most politic course to 
pursue, and all such expenditures would be returned 
a hundred-fold to the State. Let it not be said, 
even by fools, that the Yosemite " does n 't pay." 
Let it not be said by any visitor that it is a 
new Niagara for extortions and impositions, — a 
rocky pitfall for the unwary, a Slough of De- 
spond for the timid and the weak. I doubt 
not all the improvements I have indicated, and 



360 CALIFORNIA. 



more, will come in time, if not in good time ; 
and though I shrink from seeing engines snort- 
ing about in the very face of El Capitan, and 
puffing sooty smoke through the pure mist of 
the Bridal Veil, I hope to hear soon of the 
fine stage-road being continued from Clark's, 
by the old Indian trail along the Merced, into 
the valley. That will enable invalids and people 
of advanced age to make the great trip without 
peril or hardship, and release a few miserable 
mules and horses from the torture of the side- 
saddle. 

But to return to Tenaya Canon. As we faced 
about to return to the lake, we perceived that 
the storm that had been sullenly brewing all 
day was almost upon us. One dark cloud, like 
a vast, broad-winged bird, came swooping down 
from Mount Watkins. The summit of the great 
Half-Dome had so vanished in mist and mys- 
tery that you could easily imagine that vast 
vertical wall miles high. The winds soughed 
mournfully in the pines of the Enchanted Forest, 
and made a terrified tumult in the poplars as 
we hurried through. By the time we reached 



A GATHERING STORM. 361 

our horses the rain came down, though very 
gently at first. Indeed, the entire preparations 
for a storm were very solemn, stately, and delib- 
erate. The thunder was low and slow ; the very 
lightning seemed languid. As for us, we took 
matters as quietly, wrapped ourselves in our 
water-proofs, and gave ourselves up to a profound 
enjoyment of the strange, sombre beauty of the 
scene. Over the smooth domes and jagged 
precipices the heavy rain-clouds continued to roll 
lazily down. As we looked behind us we saw 
how they blotted out the Enchanted Forest and 
the lake, and filled the canons like the waves of a 
dull, gray sea ; but in the great valley they 
were floating and surging here and there, filing 
down every pass and trail, toppling off peaks 
and pinnacles, — some of them looking so solidly 
dark they almost seemed a part of the mighty, 
many-towered walls. As we neared the hotel, 
still riding quietly and in rapt (well wrapt) si- 
lence, though the sprinkle had steadily increased 
to a respectable summer shower, we noticed that 
half the great fall was shrouded from sight, 
— clouds and rain come to visit their cousins, 
16 



362 CALIFORNIA. 



mist and spray, — while the great gorge to the 
right, Indian Canon, was dark as night, crammed 
with tempest. Of course, for these clouds there 
was no blowing over, no getting out ; they were 
"corralled," and had to rain themselves away, 
which most of them did in the course of the 
night. 

After dinner all the guests — tourists from many 
parts of the world — gathered about the huge fire- 
place of rough granite in the primitive parlor at 
the old Hutchings House, enjoying the sparkling 
flame and genial warmth immensely, considering 
that it was the 15th of June. The next morning I 
rose bright and early, — no, early, but not bright. 
I was not by any means in a jubilant mood. I 
was to go out of the valley that day, — the dread- 
ful, delightful, overwhelming, uplifting valley ! I 
had chosen to depart by the Big Oak Flat and 
Chinese Camp routes, the chief recommendations 
of which are that you have only about eight miles 
of horseback-riding, if that be a recommendation ; 
and that it gives you a chance to visit the Cal- 
averas big trees, if, after Mariposa and Yosemite, 
you have not had enough of big things. The 



A JUNE VISION OF WINTER. 363 

Steep mountain trail is only three miles long. You 
take the stage at Gentry's, and go by the route I 
have indicated, or by the Coulterville route, said 
to be even more picturesque and interesting. This 
strikes the railroad at Merced. But I am poach- 
ing on the guide-book man's preserves. 

When I left our cottage that morning, to go to 
my breakfast at the hotel, I found that the rain 
had ceased, but that it was still cloudy and 
strangely cold, and — had I risen from a small 
Rip Van Winkle sleep? — all along the upper edge 
of the valley, and in some places half-way down, 
the rocks and wooded steeps were white with 
snow ! How grand the pines looked, standing up 
white and still, like so many ghostly sentinels ! A 
winter view of the Yosemite was what I had 
keenly desired, but never hoped to see. This was 
a little dream of it, — a hint of the holy white 
beauty, the fearful splendor, which Hutchings and 
Muir know so well, and which Bierstadt endured 
and braved so much to see and transfer to his 
canvas, last winter. 

With a choking good by to my host and his 
family, who had been most kind to me, — with lin- 



364 CALIFORNIA. 



gering backward looks at the pleasant places that 
would know me no more, and not know their loss, — 
I rode gloomily down to Black's, where there were 
other leave-takings, sad enough, heaven knows, for 
all the jests and brave words, — the froth on the bit- 
ter stirrup-cup, — and then away under the dreary 
clouds and chill mists. I had lingered till all the 
friends with whom I came into the valley had left. 
Other friends were going by the other route; and 
the small party I found myself with to-day were 
strangers, as much so as any fellow-pilgrims to the 
sacred Sierras can be to one. Yet, in the mood 
I was in, I did not mind it. Indeed, I rode, wher- 
ever it was possible that morning, quite apart and 
alone, feeling in the gusty mountain air and wild, 
tempestuous surroundings a pecuhar stormy delight 
which is quite inexpressible. My last view of the 
Yosemite was the grandest I ever had, — full of 
majesty and mystery. Great, billowy rain-clouds 
were driving across the valley and breaking against 
the tremendous rocks of the south side like surf 
against a craggy shore. The beautiful Cathedral 
spires faded out of sight ; the Bridal Veil wavered, 
glimmered, and was gone ; the valley itself van- 



LEAVE-TAKING. 365 



ished like a magnificent, fantastic dream ; and 
there was only left the steep, narrow mountain- 
path before me, with its noisy brooks and snow- 
dropping pines and beetling rocks, and to my left 
a dark gorge, in which I caught faint, far-down 
glimpses of the swift and sounding Merced. 



RETURN FROM THE YOSEMITE. — LAST DAYS 
IN CALIFORNIA. 

The views from the high mountains we had 
looked to enjoy, on coming out of the valley, were 
mostly lost to us through the mist and rain. The 
morning was for two or three hours cold and raw, 
and the snow fell so heavily from the loaded pines 
that we seemed to be journeying through a tre- 
mendous winter storm ; but by the time we 
reached Hodging's Ranch, which I remember as a 
good dining-place with very much good landlady, 
all was bright and clear, and the remainder of 
our day's journey was altogether enjoyable. We 
found the mountain roads admirable, and the grand 
old forests full of inviting vistas and enticing mys- 
teries. Along this route stand the Tuolumne Big 



366 CALIFORNIA, 



Trees, not a large grove, and containing no very 
distinguished Sequoias, and yet bearing in it some 
stately old fellows, who might stand up before the 
Mariposa best eleven, and "be bold." 

During that first day's journey, before our way 
brightened, and while we were yet quiet and silent, 
absorbed and vaguely oppressed with Yosemite, 
memories " pleasant and mournful to the soul," a 
chatty young ranchman got into the coach for a 
short journey, and for an hour or two amused us 
not a little. He was a Vermont boy, to whose 
Yankee sharpness and cleverness were added the 
broader foresight and more dashing energy in busi- 
ness affairs of the Californian. His face was su- 
pernaturally wide-awake, yet strangely vacant, — 
full of that peculiar 'cuteness which is a sort of 
unripe sense. He showed a confiding simplicity, 
most 7iaive and childlike. He had actually no re- 
serves. The varied tale of his fortunes was poured 
into the unresponsive bosom of the stage-coach as 
into the ear and heart of a long-lost brother. I 
think I know that same ranchman's autobiography 
as well as I know the history of the young man 
Joseph, perhaps a little better. He had got on 



GUMPTION versus LEARNING. 367 

famously ; owned two large cattle-ranches, one in 
the mountains, one in the valley. He told us the 
number of his flocks and herds, at a rough guess, 
with astounding stories of their yearly increase. 
He spoke leather contemptuously, I am sorry to 
say, of old Vermont, except as a good State from 
which to start a young man in life, in a moral sort 
of a way, and dwelt rapturously upon " Californy " 
as a land of magnificent chances. " Any man," 
he said, " with any sort of gumption, can get along 
in the mountains or mining districts, except preach- 
ers ; there ain't any kind of show for them. They 
come out here with a lot of sermons and a little 
book-learning, and fire away pretty smartly for a 
while ; but sooner or later they find that they must 
do something for a living, like the rest of us. No- 
body goes to hear 'em preach but old ladies, and 
there 's mighty few of them in this country, you 
know ; and they see it won't pay. Now, there 's a 
clergyman down in our settlement who 's college- 
bred, and did n't seem good for anything else but 
preaching ; but after trying it for a spell and getting 
dead broke at it, he just turned over a new leaf, went 
into stock-raising, and is a man among men. You 



368 CALIFORNIA. 



ought to see how the minister is rubbed off from 
him ! and yet he 's a good fellow. He don't 
come out as a preacher nowadays, except when 
there 's a funeral ; then he comes out strong. 
Why, ma'am, see him on such an occasion, in the 
morning, and he will make as good a prayer as 
you would care to hear ; and see him down to 
the saloon in the evening, and he will play as 
good a game of euchre as you would care to see. 
I don't want you to think I don't believe in re- 
ligion. It 's a good thing to keep children straight, 
and to make old folks feel comfortable. But we 
business men here in Californy have to let it slide. 
It's generally in the way of making money, — that 
is, the real article is, — and we must make money. 
I had a pious mother, one of the good, old, true- 
blue sort ; she used to send me to Sunday school 
regular, and if she heard me saying a wicked word 
she 'd go for me, as quick as wink. And I 've 
never forgotten her teachin's. To this day, if 
you '11 believe me, I can't swear before a lady." 

Our ingenuous friend said that, as the season 
advanced, he had to drive his cattle from the 
lower to the upper ranch, and that he made 



FIRST AND SECOND GAROTTE. 369 

many horseback journeys back and forth and 
after runaway cattle, camping out in the vast 
forests alone ; no, not often quite alone ; he did n't 
fancy that ; not that he was afraid, but that he 
**must have somebody to talk to, if it was only 
an Indian." There was a small Digger that he 
often took along, just to talk to, he said. Poor 
little Lo! 

We came just before night to a cluster of 
small houses, called Second Garotte, and were 
told, as we passed under a large oak, that the 
name came from the hanging from its limbs, some 
years ago, of two or three notorious gamblers 
and horse-thieves. At First Garotte, where, from 
its greater size, I should suppose a round dozen 
gamblers had some time met their deserts, we 
spent the night in a comfortable hotel, kept by 
the most obliging of landlords. 

" At five o'clock in the morning " we had break- 
fasted and were off, driving through Big-Oak Flat, 
— a rich and busy mining region once, but now 
utterly desolate and deserted, except by a few 
melancholy Chinese gleaners. But a little more 

than the stump of the gigantic oak that gave 
16* X 



370 CALIFORNIA. 



the name to this place remains. That is enor- 
mous. 

For miles along the creek, which had been 
tortured out of all its natural semblance, the 
ravaged and ransacked earth had the most dreary 
and forlorn appearance. Here and there Nature 
is making a desperate effort to recover the lost 
ground. She sends out brave little vanguards of 
thistles and sunflowers, and by the aid of winds 
and spring floods she is slowly rebuilding her 
earthworks. 

During this morning's ride we met the stage, 
packed with passengers, among whom I recognized 
"H. H." and "Susan Coolidge," the Independent's 
delightful contributors, travelling quite independent- 
ly, like the brave women they are. They were 
going into the Yosemite, looking singularly bright, 
fresh, and neat. I wonder how they came out ! 

The next pleasant object on our way was the 
Tuolumne River, a full, bright stream in a great 
hurry, as all streams in this country are. Beyond 
the ferry we passed a famous vineyard and fruit 
and flower garden. Here were the largest fig-trees 
I had seen in the State, and magnificent oleanders, 



ABANDONED HOPES AND HOMES. 371 

each great tree one brilliant mass of blooms as 
sweet and rich and passionate as the cry it sug- 
gests, of poor Hero to her lover across the Helles- 
pont. 

At Chinese Camp we turned aside from the reg- 
ular road to the railway, and took the stage for 
Murphy's and Calaveras Big Trees. Our road for 
the remainder of the day was exceedingly inter- 
esting, leading, as it did for the most part, 
through old mining districts, abandoned now, but 
full of suggestions of human passions, struggles, 
sorrows ; of wild hopes and wilder dissipation ; of 
back-breaking toil and heart-breaking disappoint- 
ment ; of madness and crime, heroism, home-sick- 
ness, and death. But the empty and closed houses 
in the little mining towns seemed even more deso- 
late than the worked-out diggings. How melan- 
choly to look on the deserted saloons, those once 
brilliant and festive haunts to which the pictur- 
esque and generous miner came every Saturday 
night, and at aristocratic inonte or democratic 
poker staked and lost his week's hard earnings 
with a magnificent recklessness which a prince 
might envy, but never emulate. Scarcely less mel- 



372 CALIFORNIA. 



ancholy is the aspect of the "Uttle church round 
the corner," or up on the lonely hill, — a pretty 
edifice, perhaps built in the old flush times, when 
people did n't care what they did with their money, 
but now abandoned to silence and solitude. Just 
beyond Sonora — a charming, shady, foreign-look- 
ing town — we came upon the most singular field 
of mining operations I have ever beheld. The 
ground on each side of the road for miles has 
been dug and washed clean away from the under- 
lying rock, which is of a peculiar broken and 
jagged character, apparently volcanic formation. 
The earth has been completely dissected, and her 
skeleton laid bare, — a strange and ghastly sight. 
In some places the denuded rocks look like enor- 
mous tusks, fangs, and snags, as though Cadmus 
had been about his old business, sowing monstrous 
dragon teeth. In and about the town of Colum- 
bia we found work, principally hydraulic mining, 
recommenced, and going on vigorously. It prom- 
ises soon to destroy all the comfort and come- 
liness of the pretty little town. In every direction 
houses are being besieged and undermined. Even 
the church seems in as imminent peril from the 



''cloth of gold" roses. 373 

encroachments of mammon as though it stood on 
Broadway. One white cottage we noticed, stand- 
ing out bravely. It had a fine garden about it, 
smiling with roses. There was no telling, of 
course, what great treasure lay in Nature's gran- 
ite vaults underneath, drawing no interest, and 
rendering every one of those festal roses as costly 
as a Chappaqua cabbage ; but I honored the 
woman who had held on to beauty and simple 
comfort, untempted by possible riches, with certain 
desolation. But she may not endure much longer: 
she is cut off on every side. The gorgeous 
''cloth of gold" roses seem to understand the situ- 
ation, and to be crowding the bloom of many 
summers into one. 

It was near Columbia that we met our friends, 
Rev. Dr. Furness and his wife, just from Cala- 
veras, bound for the Yosemite. The smile of the 
good minister was like a benediction on the day. 
He seemed a little apprehensive about his brave 
undertaking, and asked, in his quaint way, "Will 
I be frightened much } " I told him I hoped not ; 
that heaven was over the Yosemite, though an 
unconscionable way off. I might have told him 



374 



CALIFORNIA. 



how another distinguished divine had even found 
courage to preach in the awful valley, amid the 
sound of many waters and the gloom of a gather- 
ing tempest. But then, he was orthodox. 

On this route there is some fine river and moun- 
tain scenery. We crossed the Stanislaus, rendered 
classical by the story of the scientific society and 
the fatal " row " that broke it up ; and we saw 
Table Mountain, so tenderly associated with 
"Truthful James." 

Murphy's is a quiet little town, with one of the 
very best hotels in all California, where we had a 
delightful rest, in beds that were absolutely lux- 
urious. 

The stage-ride of sixteen miles, from Murphy's 
to the Big Trees, we found very pleasant in the 
early morning. The grove itself, containing nearly 
a hundred of the giants, is a most lovely place ; 
and as there is here an excellent hotel, it is be- 
coming more and more a summer resort for Cali- 
fornians. I doubt if any traveller willingly leaves 
it after a visit of only a few hours. I met here a 
dear old friend in the noble wife of Professor "Whit- 
ney, who, with her young daughter, is spending 



THE GIANT GROVE. 375 

the summer in the grand, beneficent shadow of 
the Sequoias, finding inexhaustible dehght in 
this wood of woods, so green and clean and aro- 
matic, and in watching it under all the changes of 
light and shade, of day and night. They say that 
the moonlight effects here are inexpressibly lovely. 
The trees of the Calaveras grove are less injured 
by fire than those of Mariposa, and are generally 
taller and more symmetrical. Mrs. Whitney gave 
me a vivid realization of their height by saying 
that, when she looked out upon them from her 
chamber-window at night, she saw " the stars en- 
tangled in their branches." 

In entering the grounds you drive between two 
superb trees, standing like gate-posts, and called 
*' the sentinels." How grand it would be to see 
these stately old monarchs bowing to each 
other in an earthquake ! You drive past the 
stump and a section of the trunk of the im- 
mense tree felled several years ago. It was in 
its prime, only about thirteen hundred years 
old, and sound to the heart. Its fall shook 
the grove, as Caesar's fall shook Rome. It took 
half a dozen men with pump-augers and wedges 



376 CALIFORNIA. 



twenty-two days to do the dreadful deed. Over 
the stump is built a pavilion, dedicated to re- 
ligious services, political meetings, dancing and 
tea parties. It is thirty-two feet in diameter. 
Were it in Rhode Island, it would be large 
enough for all campaign purposes ; you could 
"swing round the circle" on it, and stump the 
State. 

The tallest tree now standing is the Key- 
stone State, three hundred and twenty-five feet ; 
but one of the fallen trees, the largest and best 
preserved, looked to have been much taller, 
perhaps from its position. Abraham Lincoln 
never looked so tall as when he lay under the 
dome of the Capitol, dead. This grand old tree, 
lying in state under the blue dome of the sky, 
had for me something of the rugged majesty and 
awful repose of that ungainly, pathetic figure, 
which we remember with smiles that soften into 
tears, and tears that brighten into smiles. The 
sturdy tree must also have gone down in or 
after a great tempest. It fell up hill, but is 
very little broken. By a ladder at the root you 
can mount the trunk, and walk all the way by 



THE GIANT GROVE, 377 

a good trail to the topmost branches. It is like 
following the Nile to its source. In truth, it is 
rather a fatiguing and perilous expedition, as 
portions of the tree are very slippery. A rail- 
way up there would be an improvement, — a 
grand trunk railroad. The route seemed to me 
quite practicable : the grade is not heavy ; there 
would be but little trestle-work required at the 
breaks, and only a few sharp curves, around 
knots. The larger limbs could be tunnelled. 

There are here some curious hollow trees, — 
snug retreats for disappointed spirits, flying from 
the more hollow outside world ; and there is one 
dead tree yet standing, called the Mother of 
the Forest, which presents a peculiarly melan- 
choly, not to say ghastly, appearance, it having 
been actually flayed alive some years ago. 
Think of a skin eighteen inches thick, cuticle 
and cutis, being stripped from one hundred and 
sixteen feet of a poor old mother's body, — and 
in this climate too ! Of course, she died. The 
impious speculators took the skin to the Syden- 
ham Crystal Palace, where it was burned, — and 
served them right. 



378 CALIFORNIA. 



The only woman, beside this unfortunate 
" mother," who has been distinctly honored by 
having a tree dedicated to her, is Florence 
Nightingale, whose name naturally associates 
itself with a grove. 

The Church is nobly represented by Henry 
Ward Beecher and Thomas Starr King ; the 
State, by Webster, Clay, and Cobden ; the Litera- 
ture, by Bryant ; the Presidency, by Washington, 
Jackson, Lincoln, and Grant. The last is a 
soUd, stately tree, two hundred and sixty-one 
feet high. It seems perfectly sound, and may 
stand a good five hundred years, unless flayers, 
choppers, and augerers prove too much for it. 

Here, as at Mariposa, we noticed the diminu- 
tive size of the cone of the Sequoia Gigantea. 
If proportioned to the tree, it would be about 
as large as a flour-barrel. But Nature, who 
showed a tender regard for our heads in declin- 
ing to hang pumpkins on oaks instead of acorns, 
has shown equal consideration in this case. As 
I looked up into the lofty gloom of the dark 
branches, I wondered if little birds ever nested 
so high up. It seemed that only eagles be- 



THE SILENCE OF THE GREAT TREES. 379 

longed there. It was a breezy day, yet I lis- 
tened in vain for the sea-like surge, the sough- 
ing of the wind among those mighty branches, — 
lateral trees. No distinct piny murmur came 
down to me, and I do not believe that the 
sound they give forth in their upper solitudes is 
in proportion to their size, so unbending and 
immutable they seem. Sorrowful, but majestic ; 
elect, apart, lonely, lordly monuments of the sol- 
emn, silent ages, they surely do not make the 
ado of lesser conifers, — answering every imperti- 
nent gust, complaining of every summer storm. 
But if we were lifted up nearer to their dark 
tops, we could perhaps hear a sad, incessant mon- 
otone, a low murmur of weariness and unrest, 
out of the midst of rigid stateliness and sombre 
grandeur ; the low sob of a passion of strug- 
gle and aspiring, spent centuries ago ; a plaint, 
proud but patient, that were like a sigh from 
the burdened heart of the earth. We might 
hear at twilight mysterious whispers of old element- 
al tragedies ; of primeval portents and convulsions ; 
of the blaze of comets and the murk of eclipse ; 
of star-showers and tornadoes, that never had 
human chronicler in all the wild continent. 



380 CALIFORNIA, 



About five miles from the hotel is the South 
Calaveras Grove, but lately made accessible by a 
trail. It contains more than a thousand Sequoias, 
some of them of stupendous size. Here, it is said, 
sixteen horsemen may be seen slowly ascending a 
hill, and congregating in the hollow of a single 
tree at one time. Did the genius of James ever 
conjure up a scene more novel and strange ? I 
was grieved that time did not allow of my seeing 
this wonderful grove, being obliged to return to 
Murphy's that night. This is the best place to 
procure a tarantula's nest, — a curious little adobe 
house, hung with white paper with satin finish ; 
having a round door swinging on a perfect hinge. 
You can purchase one with the tarantula shut up 
in it, if you are willing to take charge of such an 
ugly prisoner, and run the risk of his breaking 
jail and being the death of you. 

The first place of any note on our next day's 
journey to San Francisco was Angel's Camp, the 
naming of which was a profane piece of irony. I 
remember noticing at a store, before which we 
stopped for a moment, a large lot of pitchforks, 
which struck us as rather an incongruous commodity. 



*'the house called beautiful." 381 

Here we took in a substantial Dutch angel and 
a pair of cherubs, who beguiled our way by sing- 
ing Sunday-school hymns. With all these evan- 
gelical alleviations, Jordan was still a hard road to 
travel, — stony, dusty, bare of shade. The day was 
excessively warm ; our " stage-coach " a mere " mud- 
wagon " ; there was absolutely nothing of interest 
on our way, except a few rich ranches, vast and 
lonely ; and when finally we struck the railroad at 
Milton, we were in a mood to bless fervently the 
"heathen Chinee," the Wilmington Car Manufac- 
tory, the memory of Watt, and the name of Stan- 
ford. 

My last visit in California was made where I 
made my first, — at beautiful Glenwood, the home 
of Mr. Ralston. It was so pleasant to take again, 
even though we knew it to be for the last time, 
those incomparable drives, over perfect roads, and 
through the gardens and parks of the noblest 
country-seats on the coast ; to see all these won- 
derful places in their full summer glory ; and to 
enjoy with it all the matchless driving of our host, 
who manages fine horses and finances in the same 
masterly way. How cruelly fast were all the 



CALIFORNIA. 



watches that day ; and how the hours tore along, 
Hke the dishevelled young ladies in Guido's pic- 
ture, and brought the sad moment when I must 
pass for the last time through the hospitable doors 
of the " house called Beautiful " ! Not its wealth 
and luxury had so endeared it to me, but a heart 
that was richer than riches ; a face fairer to me 
in the light of its full-orbed womanhood and gen- 
tle motherhood than the fairest pictured faces on 
the walls. Madonna, — my lady! strong and ten- 
der, proud and gracious. 

At Glenwood I met again the friends with whom 
I was to make the overland journey, — Mr. Sickels, 
the superintendent of the Union Pacific, and his 
family party. With these pleasant companions I 
left San Francisco on the 24th of June. At Oak- 
land, where the superintendent's car awaited us, 
we were joined by Mr. Joaquin Miller, poet of the 
Sierras, who was going East with some new wild- 
mountain airs, and looking more high -booted, 
haughty, and hirsute than ever. 

I will not here attempt to describe with what 
emotion I looked for the last time back, over the 
bright bay, to the new city of my love, rising 



FAREWELL TO THE GOLDEN GATE. 383 

terrace upon terrace, and hill above hill, — some- 
what too bare of fohage and decoration, — proud 
•and rugged and a little defiant of aspect, but of 
young cities "the chief among ten thousand," if 
not "the one altogether lovely," — the royal wed- 
ding-place of the Occident and the Orient. 



HOMEWARD JOURNEY. 

COLORADO REVISITED. 

Chicago, July lo, 1872. 

I CHOSE a beautiful season for leaving Cali- 
fornia, — too beautiful, for it intensified my re- 
gret. I went, even homeward, with a backward 
tug at my heart. Though on the edge of July, 
the land was still radiant with fresh verdure 
and bloom. Of the wild flowers along the road, 
the yellow were holding out best. By the way, 
the prevalence of this color in California land- 
scapes is always noticeable, — as it were the floral 
symbol of the aureate treasure hid under so much 
of the soil for so many centuries. Nature, being 
feminine, was bursting with the secret, and sent 
forth these beautiful little telltales ; but stupid 
man was long enough in taking the hint, and 
following it up, or, rather, down. 

Flower-gardens, harvest -fields, vineyards, or- 
chards, oak groves, pine forests, mines, rocks, snow- 



TO THE ROCKY MOUNTAIN SUMMIT. 385 

sheds, — these were the gradations, like steps, by 
which we ascended from the lovely valley-land 
to the grand Sierras. It was early twilight when 
we rounded Cape Horn, scarcely realizing its 
terrific grandeur when thus softened. Night came 
on very slowly, witti almost imperceptibly chan- 
ging and deepening shades of purple light, veihng 
those subUme solitudes in tender mystery. We 
sat out on the platform till late that night, and 
for nights after, never wearying of the wide, 
wild waste of silent earth, and the vast, strange 
expanse of brooding, breathless sky. Even after 
the Yosemite, we found the Valley of the Great 
Salt Lake, the Wasatch Hills, and Weber and 
Echo Canons beautiful, more beautiful than ever 
before ; for a genuine love of grand scenery " grows 
by what it feeds on " ; so when we came again to 
the familiar snowy peaks and sombre gorges of 
the Rocky Mountains, we found we had "stom- 
ach for them all," I believe the wind is always in 
full blast at Sherman, and that Cheyenne always 
seems like a place of desperate undertakings and 
temporary expedients, — has a strange look of new- 
ness and abandonment, half underdone and half 



386 HOMEWARD JOURNEY. 

undone. The one finished and flourishing and 
thoroughly satisfactory thing they have there is 
the new hotel. 

All the way from the Summit down, at every 
exposed point we found new precautions against 
snow and ice, — immense sheds and fences, line 
on line, being built, and cuts widened, putting 
another snow blockade like that of last winter 
out of the question. At Cheyenne we left the 
Union for the Denver Pacific, and ran down into 
Colorado for a week's visit. It was a glorious 
little journey. The plains I had always before 
seen dry and tawny were now green and flowery 
and fragrant ; and that magnificent line of moun- 
tains at our right, beginning with Long's Peak 
and ending with the legendary Pike's Peak, stood 
out in wondrous beauty, unveiled by smoke or 
mist. The sunset was the most joyous I ever 
beheld, wrapping that vast congregation of peaks 
and domes in unimaginable, almost intolerable 
splendor ; and all the while, in the eastern sky, 
was a wondrous display of storm-clouds, lightnings, 
and rainbows. Such a grand combination show 
I never before beheld in any theatre. 



GREELEY AND DENVER. 387 

The unique town of Greeley, capital of the 
Union Colony, we found much improved. It had 
gone on adding field to field, and ditch to ditch, 
and putting up buildings in all directions, — cosy 
houses, which already were girt about with pleas- 
ant gardens. Indeed, the thriving place is some- 
thing quite cheering to see, — a smile on the wide, 
dull cactus waste. 

Denver still leads the march of empire in 
Colorado. They have street-railways here now. 
During the past year they have put up new 
railroad buildings, hosts of stores, and innumer- 
able hotels. They have graded streets, and 
planted trees, and built a new church, and 
painted the front of the old theatre. 

I was one of a happy party of tourists for 
whom Mr. Superintendent Sickels planned and 
conducted a charming excursion up Clear Creek 
Canon, over the bed of the new narrow-gauge 
railroad, a section of the Colorado Central, run- 
ning from Golden to Blackhawk. It was a per- 
fect summer day, bright but breezy ; and our 
gay party made the trip of twelve miles, by 
carriage and on horseback, with the utmost com- 



388 HOMEWARD JOURNEY. 

fort, with absolutely unalloyed enjoyment. This 
canon has some grand points of scenery, even 
reminding one of the Yosemite. But grand as 
it is, it scarcely diverts your attention, your 
wondering admiration, from the road that winds 
and climbs along the deep, narrow gorge, where, a 
year ago, it seemed that a mule trail was scarce- 
ly practicable. To Mr. Sickels is due the chief 
credit of projecting and executing this bold en- 
terprise, — a work of immense importance to 
Colorado in the development of her vast mineral 
resources. Down this shadowy canon, till now 
only the bed of devastating wintry floods, will 
pour the boundless wealth of the great moun- 
tain mines. Through the magnificent rocky gate- 
way of little Golden City will issue a new Pac- 
tolus, whose waves may touch the far shores of 
the world. 

We found the Denver and Rio Grande nar- 
row gauge just completed to Pueblo, one hun- 
dred and sixteen miles ; and another pleasant 
incident of our visit was an excursion to that 
town, where a grand entertainment, a dinner 
followed by a ball, was given to all Denver and 



THE NEW NARROW-GAUGE ROAD. 389 

the rest of mankind. Pueblo is on the Arkansas 
River, which is even here a full, rapid stream. 
The town has picturesque surroundings, but lacks 
trees, gardens, and pleasant, home-like places 
sadly. With plenty of water at hand, it may 
easily be made a more attractive spot. The din- 
ner, which was given in the new Court House, a 
very handsome building, by the way, was a most 
enjoyable affair. Ladies and gentlemen, after set- 
ting the most generous of "grub-piles" before 
us, waited on us at table. I am persuaded that 
a future governor stood more than once be- 
hind my chair, and that a senator's wife brought 
me ice-cream. We had fine music and witty 
sentiments, and eloquence and merriment un- 
stinted. 

This section of the Denver and Rio Grande 
Railroad runs through the most picturesque por- 
tion of Colorado, outside the mountains, — over 
the Divide ; past wonderful rocks of castellated 
and monumental forms ; along lovely green val- 
leys ; and for some distance in sight of the great, 
snowy range. Colorado Springs Station and the 
colony of that name are on this road, though the 



390 HOMEWARD JOURNEY. 

springs proper are some five miles away. Near 
the station is a good hotel, where we spent a 
night, sleeping deliciously under the shadow of Pike's 
Peak and a couple of blankets. All the morning 
of the next day was spent in drives to the most 
attractive points in the vicinity. We first visited 
Glen Eyrie, a lovely, romantic spot, in which 
General Palmer has built an elegant country- 
house. In this glen are congregated and shut 
away marvels and beauties of rock and gorge, 
stream and waterfall, enough to stock an Eastern 
State like New Jersey. We next dropped into 
the Garden of the Gods, a wild, singular, nat- 
ural park, the gateway of which is formed by 
two stupendous rocks, marvelously architectural 
and cathedral-like in character. They always 
look solemn and worshipful, and there is cer- 
tainly no hollow mockery of religion about 
them. 

The famous mineral springs at Manitou have 
delightful surroundings, and we found the waters 
exceedingly pleasant and sparkhng. But a mile or 
so up the lovely canon of the Fountain Creek is an 
iron spring, which I found absolutely delicious. 



VIEWS OF DISTRACTING LOVELINESS. 391 

I should haunt that, should camp beside it, 
were I spending a summer in this grand half- 
way heaven of pure air and pure water and/ 
tenderly tempered sunshine. There is in this 
neighborhood a wild, rocky gorge, known as 
the Ute Pass, up which a wonderful road has 
been lately constructed. Shut away in this pass is 
one of the finest waterfalls I have ever seen. Be- 
side its plunging and thundering flood Southey's 
Lodore were a trickle and a murmur. Through 
Colorado City, once a very important mining 
depot, but now in its decadence, we returned to 
our hotel, the glorious morning over, but not gone. 

The monotony of our return journey to Denver 
was varied by a ride of some thirty miles on the 
pilot, or cow-catcher. The situation gave a rare 
opportunity to study the lovely and peculiar scen- 
ery of the route, with distant pictures of mountain 
and sky ; but for myself, I must confess that my 
attention was a good deal distracted by occasional 
water-views through trestle-work below us, and 
spirited cattle-pieces on the track before us. 

We left Denver on the morning of the glorious 
Fourth, and ran a gantlet of salutes, rockets, and 



392 HOMEWARD JOURNEY. 

fire-crackers all the way to Omaha, where ended 
my journeyings over Pacific railroads in a director's 
car. 

But it really does not seem quite the thing to 
dismiss the great trip so lightly and quietly. I 
feel bound to give something like a detail of its 
hardships and privations, after the manner of old 
trans-continental travelers. This may seem a little 
ungracious toward the superintendent, whose guests 
we were ; but independent itinerant journalists are 
held by no such ordinary scruples. The "bridge 
that carries them safe over " comes in for a double 
share of dispraise usually. 

Fortunately our party started with the idea of 
'* roughing it," and so were able to take things as 
they came, being all tolerably good-humored peo- 
ple. But we had our trials. In the first place, 
our car was fastened to the tail of an immense 
train, and took the brunt of the wagging. Our 
coffee and tea were frequently slopped over at 
table. As to the table, though it was always 
bountifully suppUed, it was not, I must say, as 
elegantly and thoroughly appointed as one could 
wish. There was no ipergiie, no printed bill of 



ROUGHING IT BY RAIL. 



393 



fare. There were no finger-glasses, and the sup- 
ply of nut-crackers was limited. There was not 
even a full assortment of wine-glasses ; and when, 
on the Summit, Mr. Joaquin Miller treated to 
champagne, we were obliged to worry it down out 
of lemonade goblets. We had, of course, napkins, 
but the rings were evidently of plated ware. A 
pretty idea would have been a set of sohd silver 
Hned with gold, each one engraved with the name 
of a guest of the superintendent of the Union 
Pacific, and designed to be taken away as a sig- 
nificant souvenir of California and Colorado. When 
a man sets out to do a handsome thing, I like to 
see him do it. 

It is true that we had for desserts and lunches 
a large variety of fruits and nuts, — too large, if 
anything. We became satiated with oranges, ba- 
nanas, apricots, strawberries, peaches, and cherries ; 
but I missed blackberries and pears, my favorite 
fruit ; and the almonds were all hard-shelled, and 
I decidedly prefer the soft. The milk and eggs 
were not as rich and fresh as they might have 
been if a new-milch cow and a hennery had been 
attached to the car. Our party of ten was put 
17* 



394 HOMEWARD JOURNEY. 

upon a rather short allowance of servants, having 
only Henry the cook, and Thomas the excellent 
colored steward. It is but justice to them, how- 
ever, to say that they multiplied themselves by 
the utmost devotion, energy, and ingenuity. They 
constantly surprised us with new dishes and de- 
coctions, putting us in peril of surfeit and all the 
horrors of dyspepsia. On the last morning of the 
trip we had set before us fish, steak, chops, ham 
and eggs, corn-bread, light biscuit, and pineapple 
pancakes. How in the name of Dio Lewis were 
we to choose ? In an agony of indecision we ap- 
pealed to the steward, but he answered by a mute, 
diabolic grin ; so we partook of all, not willing to 
hurt his feelings ; for was he not a man and a 
voter ? At such times we thought enviously of 
the old emigrants camping on the plains. How 
simple their choice : black coffee, saleratus-bread, 
and bacon, or bacon, saleratus-bread, and black 
coffee ! However, we uttered no complaint of our 
fare ; but I remember that one morning when we 
had ordered chops and expected chops, we had steak 
without mushrooms, and on that very day the 
soup was too salt. Our sleeping arrangements 



HARDSHIPS OF THE OVERLAND ROUTE. 395 

were comfortable, but not exactly sumptuous. The 
linen, though always clean and well aired, was not 
superfine, the pillow-cases being quite plain. The 
towels in the dressing-room, though plentiful, were 
by no means of the daintiest sort. In the sa- 
ponaceous line, I found nothing more rich and 
rare than Colgate's Honey Soap. Now, if there 
is anything I am tired of, it is Colgate's Honey 
Soap. In the evening we gathered in the little 
drawing-room, and were almost compelled to be 
sociable, as the light, neither of gas nor of wax- 
candles, scarcely permitted of our reading. In the 
day we had so much room that we wandered aim- 
lessly about, lounging on the sofas and platforms, 
no one of us seeming to know where he or she 
really belonged, — a most unsettled and demoral- 
ized condition, but aristocratic, doubtless. We 
tried not to be puffed up, and, when stopping at 
stations, went forth in rough hats and dusters, 
and mingled with our fellow-beings, remembering 
the days when we, too, had traveled with tickets 
and passes, had been called on to pay for extra 
baggage, and had been obliged to bolt down exe- 
crable meals. 



396 HOMEWARD JOURNEY. 

We were whirled along so relentlessly over 
that world-renowned overland route that we had 
no time to study its geological features, its 
fmuia or its flora. Often we thought of the 
old emigrants, who sometimes had six months 
in which to become familiar with it in all its 
changing phases. How we would have liked 
to visit some of the graves along that old emi- 
grant track, with time to drop a few tears on 
the deserted hunting-grounds of the noble red 
man ! We had wild longings to He by at night, 
like those old emigrants, and study the stars 
and hear the coyotes howl, while the sage-brush 
camp-fire burned. Mr. Joaquin Miller once point- 
ed out to us the scene of an old Indian fight, 
whereof he bears a reminder in one of his arms, 
somewhat troublesome in damp weather. For a 
poet, and a philanthropist of the Vincent Colyer 
school, he seems to have had a large number of 
"scrimmages" of this sort. But no such romantic 
adventure broke the monotony of our journey 
across the plains. Not a Piute menaced us, not 
a Digger defied us. We tried to keep up our 
spirits, however. We told stories and laughed 



A SILENT MINSTREL. 397 

at each other's jests, whatever it cost us. We 
laughed most generously at the superintendent's 
pleasantries, of course. They were not bad ; but 
if they had been, we should have laughed all 
the same, having made up our minds to rough 
it. Though we had a minstrel at the festive 
board, he harped not, neither did he sing. He was 
apparently in low spirits at leaving his Sierras. 
Crossing the alkali desert is also depressing, 
inclining even a poet to keep his mouth shut ; 
but when we struck the grand Rocky Range, 
something in the poetic line was expected from 
him. Still he kept his j)lace on the platform in 
sombre silence, smoking cigarettes under the 
shade of a huge Panama. We suspected that 
he was secretly wrestling with the Rocky Moun- 
tains, and that they were having rather the best 
of it. But if our wild singer warbled not, he 
wrote many autographs, — triumphs of illegibility. 
The motion of a train is not usually favorable 
to the production of elegant articles of this sort. 
In fact, the only handwriting I have ever known 
improved by it is that of Mr. Greeley. It were 
a good idea when a celebrity is on the rail to 



398 HOMEWARD JOURNEY. 

Stop the train now and then and announce, 
" Twenty minutes for autographs ! " 

The superintendent was annoyed by telegrams, 
and we were all troubled by the train outrun- 
ning our watches. We missed our morning pa- 
pers, and were really obliged to look through 
some of the books we had with us. We were 
cheered by no visits from venders of figs and 
candy cash-boxes ; we were cut off, in our haughty 
isolation, from the companionship of young chil- 
dren and innocent babies. I one day rashly 
borrowed a dear little fellow from a lady who 
had a fine assortment of small boys. I bore him, 
with the help of conductors and brakemen, from 
the first Pullman through, it seemed to me, a 
mile of cars, under full headway, down grade, to 
our palatial establishment. He gazed around the 
sumptuous apartment, and, chilled by its cold 
splendor, immediately wanted to " go home." 
We showed him a bottled tarantula and gave 
him a horned toad to play with ; but they failed 
to console him, and we were compelled to return 
him to his mother. He retained our toad to 
frighten his little brother with, and we left him 



MARK TAPLEIAN SERENITY. 399 

happy. On the whole, we got along very well 
on our long, hard, precipitate pilgrimage. Being 
all old travellers, and, as I said, rather good-na- 
tured people, we did not quarrel about the easi- 
est seats. I suppose they were all what you 
would call comfortable, though, if roughing it had 
not been in the programme, a velvet rocking- 
chair or two would not have been out of place 
in the little salon where we spent much of our 
time. Still, we came into Omaha quite fresh, 
and were sorry to separate, and especially to part 
from our kind host and hostess and their sweet 
young daughters, who had cheerfully roughed it 
with us, day and night, across deserts and moun- 
tain ranges, from San Francisco Bay to the 
Missouri River, — almost across the continent. 

But now I come to a theme which is both too 
grave and too grand, too sad and too glad, to jest 
over, — the desolation and the resurrection of Chi- 
cago. The morning after my return to the city 
of my old love, I drove over the entire burned dis- 
trict. The North side, once so fair and flourishing, 
is still very desolate, though showing life here and 
there, amid the ruins of its elegant homes, noble 



400 HOMEWARD JOURNEY. 

churches, and beautiful parks ; but the South side 
is a marvelous, bewildering scene of industry and 
enterprise, of almost superhuman energy. Not the 
story of Chicago's early life of Titanic toil and 
struggle, when she rose, like a second Venice, 
from the midst of a dark flood, and then banished 
the flood ; not the marvels she wrought under the 
sea ; not the miracle of turning a river on its im- 
memorial course, of smiting the nether rock and 
calling water from the vasty deep ; not all its 
wondrous transformations, enterprises, and victo- 
ries have equalled this brave, stern struggle with 
immeasurable misfortune, this triumphant upris- 
ing from defeat and desolation. I believe that the 
world can present no grander sight than this ; and 
remembering the sadness, the utter heart-sickness 
with which I named the name of Chicago less 
than a year ago, I thank God that I am per- 
mitted to see her at this great time, when she is 
shaking the ashes from her unblanched head, and 
setting upon it again, with her own strong hand, 
her noble civic crown. 



COLORADO IN AUTUMN. 



Greeley, Colorado, November 5, 1872. 

IT is odd to be here, of all places in the Ter- 
ritory ; on this day, of all days in the year, — 
day " big with the fate of Caesar and of Rome," 
day which is to decide forever the destiny of that 
eminent citizen whose name is identified with 
this noble young colony. Whatever the result 
of the great political struggle in the States, here 
Horace Greeley is the elect man, with no question 
of a second term. Here his honorable fame 
will grow with the fortunes of an intelligent and 
industrious community, and faithful irrigation shall 
keep his memory green. 

A more peaceful retreat could scarcely be found 
at this eventful and tumultuous time, by a quiet, 
unenfranchised citizen like your correspondent. 
Not a surge of popular excitement penetrates to 
these flat shores, not an echo of the roar of the 



402 COLORADO IN AUTUMN. 

great conflict rouses or vexes our souls. Even 
the Liberals, though anticipating the defeat of 
their party in the States, do not seem as much 
cast down as you would expect. The old Happy 
Valley of Rasselas could hardly seem more shut 
away from the world of political strife and as- 
piration than this busy young town, with tribuUry 
rivers and vast, snowy mountains on one side of 
it, and railways and an infinity of sky and plain 
on the other. Here men and women are to-day 
on an absolute equality, — an equality of "no con- 
sequence" to the State. Here man and wife do 
not even count one. I rather like it: it is good 
discipline for the men. 

I have now spent more than a month in Col- 
orado, — more than a month of determined and 
unmitigated idleness. I came in search of the 
health lost in your dreadful Eastern summer, 
and have, I trust, found it. But though return- 
ing strength has brought with it constant and 
almost ungovernable impulses toward outdoor life, 
wandering and climbing, and vagabondizing gener- 
ally, it brings no inclination toward mental exer- 
tion of any kind. " I kin work, but I don't hanker 



TAKING THE BACK TRACK. 403 

arter it," in this bracing, bright, resplendent au- 
tumn sunshine, and under these deep, sparkling, 
frosty November nights. 

It was on the ist of October that we left 
Chicago. We had just been visited by a severe 
storm, and the air, both of lake and prairie, had 
a peculiar vindictive sharpness and rawness that 
cut into weak lungs savagely, and pierced to the 
very marrow of one's bones. It was not till we 
passed the Missouri that the chill and the damp- 
ness quite disappeared, and the air, though cool, 
became balmy, at night frosty, but kindly, at 
the same time exhilarating and soothing. Courage 
came back to me on every invisible wave of the 
boundless, aerial sea of the plains. I was again 
content with this world, the goodly, broad, gen- 
erous world, I was inclined to take stock in this 
life once more. Colorado still looked beautiful to 
me, though "wildly clad" in russet brown. Every 
faintest green tinge had died out of the rough 
turf Every flower had gone under, except an 
occasional belated poppy ; the snows had descend- 
ed on Long's Peak and lovely Mount Rosalie ; 
and here and there on all the great range, adding 



404 COLORADO IN AUTUMN. 



the last unimagined glory to the splendors of 
sunset and sunrise. 

After a few days of delicious rest at Denver, 
we drove over to Boulder, that picturesque little 
town, nestled like a darling up against the moun- 
tains. It was evening when we arrived ; and 
dimly could be discerned those famous rocky land- 
marks, the dusty and dilapidated Buttes ("butes"), 
lying on the plains, just where the foot-hills 
kicked them off, some night, long ago. The next 
day we gave to exploring Boulder Canon, the 
most beautiful of all the wonderful canons of Col- 
orado. I had seen it last in midsummer, when 
the river was high and its banks green and flow- 
ery. Now the scene seemed almost new. The 
autumnal tints of the foliage, every shade of red 
and gold and brown, were absolutely transporting, 
— a feast, an ecstasy, an intoxication of the sight. 
And then the mighty, majestic rocks on either 
side, softened by clinging vines, mosses, and 
lichens, and made beautiful and gracious by faith- 
ful, adventurous pines, climbing up everywhere, 
from base to summit. We drove up some twelve 
miles, and picnicked in a lovely spot, in full sight 



NARROW GAUGE IN A NARROW GORGE. 405 

of the magnificent "Castle Rock." Ah, the pic- 
tures above and around and beneath us! — preci- 
pice and pinnacle of gray granite, with rich pur- 
ple shades ; dark pines and silver cedars, and 
golden willows ; and, at our feet, the swift, bright 
stream, with its foaming rapids and fairy cascades. 
It was a scene as impossible to describe as to 
forget. It had about it a sort of august and 
sacred loveliness and loneliness. The spirit of 
that serene mountain solitude was solemn, yet 
glad. The golden autumnal silence praised God. 

In strong contrast to Boulder is Clear Creek 
Canon, up which runs the Colorado Central Nar- 
row Gauge. We revisited this with an excursion 
party of journalists and railroad people, the guests 
of the superintendent and chief engineer, Mr. 
Sickels. The trip by rail was from Golden City 
to the present terminus of the road, some seven 
miles below Central. It was a wonderful little 
expedition. I do not believe that there are any 
where else in the railroad kingdom eighteen consec- 
utive miles of such grand and peculiar scenery. 
Streams and waterfalls, and tremendous boulders ; 
mountains rising above mountains, sombre and 



4o6 COLORADO IN AUTUMN. 

monstrous shapes, brooding sullenly over yet undis- 
covered and unthought-of treasure hid in their 
hard, secret hearts ; and the rocks that walled us 
in, — rocks riven asunder in some awful, imme- 
morial convulsion ; rocks in domes, and towers, 
and turrets, and bastions, and vast, vertical pre- 
cipices ; rocks daintily festooned by vines, white 
with the fleecy tufts of the clambering clematis ; 
rocks toiled over by straggling processions of pines ; 
rocks black, savage, and bare, save where far up, in 
hollows and creyices, the first snow of the mild 
autumn rested and gleamed in the midday sunlight. 
The road itself, that triumph over the faithless 
and unbelieving, was a perpetual marvel to us 
all, with its skilful doubling of bold capes, its 
curves and cuts and convolutions. The day was 
so mild and still, that we found an " observation 
car" quite comfortable, while giving us admirable 
opportunities for seeing everything on our way. 
Ours was a special train, and not heavily freight- 
ed; yet the sturdy little engine toiled up the 
steep grade with much ado, puffing and panting, 
and wheezing in an asthmatic way which was 
really quite distressing. The fame of this bold, 



Colorado's future. 407 

picturesque route, the peculiar sombre beauty of 
this canon, now first made accessible to tourists, 
will secure for the little pioneer mountain road 
a great amount of summer travel, and already 
its business is more than it can well dispose of. 
When its continuations and tributaries are com- 
pleted, trains will follow each other up und down 
this canon like the curious processions of ants 
we have watched on summer days, moving con- 
tinuously up and down a wall or a tree, with 
never a break nor a collision. 

This road will be completed to Blackhawk, 
about a mile below Central City, by the ist of 
January. Then will begin its great traffic, con- 
veying ore to Golden and Denver to be smelted 
and crushed, and carrying coal and merchandise 
to Central ; and when the other proposed routes to 
Idaho, Georgetown, and to the new and rich 
silver mines of the South Park are completed, 
will begin Colorado's great days. Then she will 
come into possession of her magnificent birth- 
right, her imperial inheritance, hid away for ages 
of ages in the mysterious treasure-vaults of nature. 
Then, too, will agriculture receive new impulse 



4o8 COLORADO IN AUTUMN. 

and inspiration. The rivers must send forth their 
missionaries of fruitfulness and verdure, and lace 
the land with irrigating canals. The brown plains 
will be tapped with wells, and the prairie winds, 
wild and idle since the creation, will be set to 
work to turn those picturesque mills, whose mis- 
sion it will be to transform the desert into a 
garden of delight, of matchless melons and mon- 
strous cabbages, beets and onions, pumpkins and 
turnips, such as New England farmers never dream 
of, even after a Thanksgiving dinner. It is easy 
to see that this system of narrow-gauge railroads — 
the only system practicable in these mountains — 
will enrich this section, add materially to the 
wealth of the whole country, and not be a bad 
thing for the parties particularly engaged in it. 
The Union Pacific Railroad Company are men 
wise in their generation. They know when the 
harvest of golden opportunity is ripe, and just 
where to thrust in their keen Sickels. 

The weather in Colorado was, all through Octo- 
ber, brilliant, dry, and warm, — too warm some- 
times for comfort in the middle of the day. 
The contrast between day and night we found a 



FOUNTAIN CANON. 409 

little too sharp. For that reason I do not think 
Denver, or any of the mountain towns, the best 
place for invalids during the autumn and winter. 
Of all the points I have yet visited in the Ter- 
ritory, I think Manitou Springs, near the mouth 
of Fountain Canon, decidedly the safest and pleas- 
antest spot for an invalid. It is sheltered from 
the sharp winds, yet sufficiently open to the sun- 
light ; it has a great deal of foliage, yet is sin- 
gularly cheerful ; it is near the grand mountains, 
yet is not darkly domineered over by them. 
There is there now a beautiful, comfortable, and 
home-like hotel, admirably managed, which is to 
be kept open all winter for the special benefit 
of invalids. Friends of ours, who spent last win- 
ter in this neighborhood, give enthusiastic accounts 
of the mild and brilliant weather, and the pure, 
bracing air, which kept them and their young 
children in perfect health and joyous spirits all 
through the season, — a season exceptionally cold 
and stormy in the northern part of the Territory. 
People who come to Colorado for their health 
make, I am assured, a grave mistake in leaving 
with the summer. If they find themselves bene- 

18 



4ro COLORADO IN AUTUMN. 

fited at all by the air and the altitude, they 
should remain through the autumn, at least, and 
then, if still better, try the winter. 

The finest grounds about the Springs have 
been laid out in villa lots, and are rapidly being 
built upon ; so the time is not distant when 
Manitou will be, not only the loveliest spot in this 
lovely wild land, but a thronged and fashionable 
watering-place. 

The -railroad ride from Colorado Springs to Den- 
ver we found almost as delightful as in the sum- 
mer; but, after all, it was tame compared with 
the stage ride we took, a few days later, from 
Central to Georgetown, over a wonderful moun- 
tain road. We set out from Central on a breezy 
but sunny day, under a heavy press of parasol: 
we reached Georgetown amid darkness, cold, rain, 
and snow. But the morning dawned brightly, 
and we enjoyed to the utmost our brief visit to 
that queen of the old mining towns. We took 
advantage of every burst of sunlight, we drove 
and walked in the teeth of the keen wind, and 
took horseback excursions under the gray wings of 
hovering snow-storms ; and when we departed, the 



THE THIUMPH OF TRAVELING. 4II 

winter seemed closing in upon the town, sweep- 
ing down the dark canons ; and the whole grand 
mountain and valley picture was something to 
look back upon with a thrill of admiration, also 
of joy at having safely run the blockade. By 
the way, they are having at Georgetown what they 
call an "ore blockade." The miners have got out 
more ore than they can dispose of by sale at paying 
prices, or by reducing, though the mills are crush- 
ing, and the smelting-works fuming, like so many 
infernos day and night. Here, as in other mining 
towns, "the whole creation groaneth and travail- 
eth together" for the happy day of railroad fa- 
cilities. But I shall be sorry to see even the 
pretty passenger-cars of the "baby railroad" su- 
persede the admirable stage-coaches of this most 
picturesque mountain route. Life will have lost 
much of its savor when we can hope to sit no 
more on the lofty box beside pleasant Hiram 
Washburn, and watch his splendid handling of 
his handsome six-horse team, hear his jokes and 
stories, look over mountain and valley, away and 
away, drink in the heavenly air, and peer down 
occasionally on the inside passengers, getting 



412 COLORADO IN AUTUMN. 

all the dust and little of the prospect. It is 
the very bliss and triumph of traveling. 

We found sunny, sheltered Idaho still attrac- 
tive, though almost deserted by visitors. The 
bright, cosy parlor of the Beebe House looked 
so precisely as it did during my summer visit 
of last year, that I looked round involuntarily for 
the pleasant friends that there used to gather 
for long, merry evenings. Alas! they are widely 
scattered ; and one young girl, whose sweet, yearn- 
ing face had a look, even then, of having done 
with all earthly things, except love, has since 
passed through a valley more shadowy and yet 
more peaceful than this, and stood on more de- 
lectable mountains than these, and is now breath- 
ing an air that has in it no faintest taint of 
mortal decay, no threatening of winter, no chill 
of death. 

We leave for the East next week, and, late as 
it is, we leave with regret. The weather has been 
thus far so almost miraculously beautiful and 
bright, and the air of the day of so divine a 
quality, that in every way we feel " it is good to 
be here." In this transparent air, the views both 



A LAST FOND LOOK. 413 

from Denver and here of the snowy peaks and 
domes on the vast range are marvelously grand 
and uplifting, especially at sunset and sunrise. 
And the tawny earth, in the wide, still plain that 
weds the sky in the utterly level horizon, like a 
sea becalmed, and in those grand ground-swells 
that reach the purple foot-hills, has a beauty of 
its own, — a stern, grave, uncompromising beauty, 
which seems to say, " Nature and the grand forms 
she first created, mighty, unsubdued creatures, 
were content with me, and I am content with 
myself. Better to be the free waste of God, the 
pasture of his wild flocks, the racing-ground of 
his winds, than the garden of man, fenced and 
ditched and harrowed and burdened." 

I dread to think how we shall miss this sense 
of magnificent altitude, of infinite roominess, when 
we get down home, by the Potomac, into the 
damp, low region of fogs and politics, where we 
can only get views of river or hills in street- 
wide vistas, and aggravating glimpses of sunset 
over the gloomy roof of the Coast Survey. 



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WE AND OUR NEIGHBORS: 

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YALE LECTURES ON PREACHING. 

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and a striking exhibition of the author's magnanimity and breadth of loving sym- 
pathy. 



" The sermons are written in a style at once 
brilliant, epigrammatic, and readable."— C/ZzVa 
Herald. 

" This little book has created considerable 
discussion among the religious journals, and will 
be read with interest by all." — Phila. Ledger. 



" There is hardly a page which does not ofTer 
a fresh thought, a genial touch of humor, or a 
suggestion at which the reader's heart leaps up 
with grateful surprise that a minister belonging 
to a sect can think and speak so generously and 
nobly." — Milwaukee Sentinel. 



PRINCIPLES OF DOMESTIC SCIENCE 

AS APPLIED TO THE DUTIES AND PLEASURES OF HOME. 

By CATHARINE E. BEECHER and HARRIET BEECHER STOWE. 
I vol. i2mo. Profusely Illustrated. Cloth, $ 2. 

Prepared with a view to assist in training young women for the distinctive duties 
which inevitably come upon them in household life, this volume has been made with 
especial reference to the duties, cares, and pleasures of ilie family, as being the place 
where, whatever the political developments of the future, woman, from her very na- 
ture of body and of spirit, will find her most engrossing occupation. It is full of 
interest for all intelligent girls and young women. 

The work has been heartily indorsed and adopted by the directors of many of the 
leading Colleges and Seminaries for young women as a text-book, both for study and 
reading. 

27 Park Place, and 24 &^ 26 Murray Street, New York. 



8 Works Published by jp. B. Ford 6^ Co. 

MINES, MILLS, AND FURNACES OF THE PRECIOUS 
METALS OF THE UNITED STATES. 

BEING A COMPLETE EXPOSITION OF THE GENERAL METHODS EMPLOYED IN THE 
GREAT MINING INDUSTRIES OF AMERICA. 

By ROSSITER W. RAYMOND, Ph. D., 

U.S. Commissioner of Mining Statistics. 

I vol. 8vo. With Plates. Cloth, $ 3 50. 

This is a very particular account of the condition of the mining interests, and the 

processes and mechanical appliances which are applicable to them, in California, 

Nevada, Oregon, Idaho, Montana, Utah, Arizona, Wyoming, Colorado, and New 

Mexico. It is the report of the Commissioner to the Secretary of the Treasury, 

and embodies all the information which official investigation and contributions from 

experts and residents of those regions can afford. 



" The author is thorough in his subject, and 
has already published a work on our mines which 
commanded universal approval by its clearness 
of statement and breadth of views." — A /i>any 
Argits. 

" His scientific ability, his practical knowledge 



of mines and mining, his unerring judgment, 
and, finally, the enthusiasm with which he enters 
upon his work, all combine to fit him for his po- 
sition, and none could bring to it a greater de- 
gree of uprightness and fairness. ' — Denver 
News. 



HISTORY OF THE STATE OF NEW YORK. 

FROM THE DATE OF THE DISCOVERY AND SETTLEMENTS ON MANHATTAN ISL- 
AND TO THE PRESENT TIME. A TEXT-BOOK FOR HIGH SCHOOLS, 
ACADEMIES, AND COLLEGES. 

By S. S. RANDALL, 

Superintendent of Public Education in New York City. 

1 vol. i2mo. Illustrated. Cloth, $ i 75. 

Officially adopted by the Boards of Education in the cities of New York, Brooklyn, 
and Jersey City, for use in the Public Schools ; and in Private Schools throughout the 
State. 



^^ Any of tlxe above books will be sent to any address, post- 
paid, upon receipt of the price by the Publishers. 



27 Park Place, and 24 (2r» 26 Murray Street, New York. 



WorJ^s Published by y, B. Ford &- Co. 



Suferriptbn ^ublkaticns. 



THE LIFE OF JESUS, THE CHRIST. 

By henry ward BEECHER. 

profusely illustrated, from designs after nature, by a. l. rawson, 

drawn on wood by harry fenn, and engraved by the brothers 

linton; with numerous maps j and with a steel-plate 

frontispiece, " head of christ," copied from 

da vincl's " last supper," by w. e. marshall. 

Part I. 
Popular Edition, i vol. 8vo. Cloth, $ 3 50. 
Imperial E'dition. i vol. 4to. Cloth, $7 50. 
It is rare to find in any one book so many attractions as this presents, in the gran- 
deur and interest of the subject, and the peculiar fitness of the author for its treatment 
both by native genius and careful preparation. Mr. Beecher has put his whole won- 
derful self into the writing of this book. 



" The book which the masses of the Christian 
world have been waiting for." — REV. R. S. 
Storrs, D. d. 

" We know of no book which is so well calcu- 
lated to answer the wants of the Christian pub- 
lic of all classes, sects, and denominations." — 
Albany Evening jfournal. 



"He has neither thrown off his random 
thoughts nor strung together his best thoughts ; 
but has brought all his powers, in the maturity 
of their strength, in the richness of their expe- 
rience, and the largeness of their development, 
to produce a work that may fitly represent the 
results of his life." — REV. J. P. THOMPSON. 
171 tJte Independent. 



Part II. In Preparation. 



A LIBRARY OF POETRY AND SONG. 

BEING CHOICE SELECTIONS FROM THE POETS. 

WITH AN INTRODUCTION 

By WILLIAM CULLEN BRYANT. 
Illustrated with a Portrait on Steel of Mr. Bryant, twenty-six Autographic Fac- 
similes on Wood of Celebrated Poets, and sixteen full-page Wood 
Engravings by the best Artists. 
Poptdar Edition, i vol. 8vo. Cloth, % 5 00. 
Red- Line Edition, i vol. 8vo. Cloth, $ 7 50. 
This book has been prepared with the aim of gathering into a single volume the 
largest practicable compilation of the best poems of the English language, making it as 
nearly as possible the choicest and most complete general collection published. 



" Good taste has ruled in the selections, and 
the compiler has performed his exceedingly dif- 
ficult task with great success." — Chicago Ad- 
vance. 

" Bryant's Introduction to the volume is a 
most beautiful and comprehensive critical essay 



on poets and poetry, from the days of ' the father ing Post. 



of English poetry' to the present Wvaz." — Al- 
bany EventJtg journal. 

" The frontispiece is an exquisite likeness of 
Mr. Bryant, and scattered throughout the book 
are many autographic fac-similes, which greatly 
enhance its attractiveness." — AVw York Even- 



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^ttbjeJcriptton Prtbltcattonis;. — Continued. 



A LIBRARY OF FAMOUS FICTION. 

EMBRACING THE NINE STANDARD MASTERPIECES OF IMAGINA- 
TIVE LITERATURE. 



WITH AN INTRODUCTION 

By HARRIET BEECHER STOWE. 

Illustrated with thirty-four Engravings on Wood' 
I vol. 8vo. 1070 pages. Cloth, $5. 
In this companion book to the " Library of Poetry and Song," the famous fictions 
which have delighted generations are offered to the public in an elegant and conven- 
ient form. Mrs. Stowe's Introduction is an admirable feature of the book. 



" A fitting companion for the popular ' Library 
of Poetry and Song.' " — /.jyo^j (A'. K ) Repub- 
lican. 

" All ages will delight in it, — some because it 
presents the tales which charmed them in youth, 
and some because it will open to them the rich 
treasures of wildest fancy and most limitless 
imagination." — Philadelphia Age. 

" Not a single one could be spared from this 



group." — Rahway {N. y. ) Advocate and 
Titnes. 

" The book is a gathering of intellectual treas- 
ures, which all intelligent families must desire in 
Some form to possess and preserve ; and it is be- 
lieved that this is the most convenient, interest- 
ing, and elegant form in which they have ever 
been presented to the public." — Newbtirgh 
(N. Y.) Journal. 



THE NEW HOUSEKEEPER'S MANUAL. 



EMBRACING 



'THE AMERICAN WOMAN'S HOME," AND 
HANDY COOK-BOOK." 



T HM 



CATHARINE E. BEECHER and HARRIET BEECHER STOWE. 

Profusely Illustrated. 
I vol. 8vo. Cloth, ^3. 
An eminently practical work, the result of long domestic experience, and thorough 
study of domestic needs. It deals with the foundation principles of successful house- 
keeping, besides being full of detailed directions. It gives the scientific and the com- 
mon-sense reason why, which lies at the foundation of the operations of e very-day life. 

" The reading of this work will tend to make 
better wives, mothers, and companions." — 
Maji/ord's Monthly (St. Louis). 

The receipts, counsels, directions, hints, and 
:he little perplexities 
Northern Christian 



" It is a book which, to country readers at 
least, must prove invaluable." — A^. V. Tribune. 

*' Young married women, if they will but read, 
may find many helps to pleasant and comfortable 
living in this volume." — New York Times. 

" It trcsAs practically of every subject relating 
to domestic life, from the woman's stand-point." 
— Christiatt Advocate (N. Y.). 



experiences meet many of the little perplexities 



of a housekeeper's heai 
Advocate. 



J^^ The above Books are sold only by Subscription through our 
Agents. 



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Works Published by J. B. Ford 6^ Co. 



II 



^moirkals. 



THE CHRISTIAN UNION. 

AN UNSECTARIAN RELIGIOUS WEEKLY NEWSPAPER. 

HENRY WAKD BEECHER, Editor. 

In the management and editorial conduct of the paper, Mr. Beecher is assisted by 
an able staflf of skillful and experienced journalists ; while the contributors embrace 
well-known and eminent writers from every evangelical denomination not only, but 
from every group of brilliant literary writers in this country, and several in England. 

General Contents. 



THE OUTLOOK. 

EDITORIAL AR TICLES, 

POETRY, 

CONTRIB UTED AR TICLES, 

LECTURE-ROOM TALK, 



FOREIGN NOTES, 
BOOKS AND AUTHORS, 
THE HOUSEHOLD, 
THE LITTLE FOLKS, 
THE CHURCH, 
THE WEEK, 



SCIENTIFIC AND SANI- 
TARY, 
SA YINGS AND DOINGS, 
FINANCIAL, 
FARM AND GARDEN. 



Questions from Correspondents are answered under the head of 
"Inquiring Friends." 

PARTIAL LIST OF CONTRIBUTORS FOR 1873. 



Rev. H. Allon, of the British Quarterly 
Review, 

Chas. Dudley Warner, of the Hart- 
ford Cotirant, 

Edward Everett Hale, of Old and 
New, 

Rev. Abel Stevens, of the Methodist, 

J. B. T. Marsh, of the Advance, 

Rev. Lyman Abbot, of the Christian 
IVeekly, 

R. W. Raymond, of the Engineering 
and Mining journal, 

And other famous Newspaper men. Also, 

Jas. Freeman Clarke, 

John G. Whittier, 

J. W. Deforest, 

Charles L. Brace, 

Elihu Burritt, 

Mrs. H. B. Stowe, 

Mrs. H. W. Beecher, 

Mrs. Lucia Calhoun Runkle, 

Louise Chandler Moulton, 

SERIAL STORIES BY 

LOUISA M. ALCOTT, HARRIET BEECHER STOWE, EDWARD 

EGGLESTON, GRACE GREENWOOD, and ROBERTSON GRAY. 

Terms : S 3 a Year, with Premium Oleogrraph. 



Celia Burleigh, 

Rose Terry, 

Mrs. R. S. Greenough, 

Louisa M. Alcott, 

Grace Greenwood, 

Carl Spencer, 

Mrs. Amelia E. Barr, 

And other famous women. Also, 

President Porter, of Yale College, 

President Oilman, of University of 

California, 
Rev. Leonard Bacon, D. D., Yale 

Theological Seminary, 
Bishop Huntington, of Central New 

York, 
Bishop Clark, of Rhode Island, 
Rev. W. M. Taylor, D. D., 
Rev. R. S. Storrs, Jr., D, D., 
Rev. Thomas K. Beecher, 
Rev. Edward Beecher, D. D., 
A nd many others. 



27 Park Place, and 24 <Sr* 26 Murray Street, New York. 



cy 



12 



Works Published by y. B. Ford 6^ Co. 



Periobual publicatiottisf — Cotitinued, 



PLYMOUTH PULPIT: 

A WEEKLY PUBLICATION OF SERMONS. 
By henry ward BEECHER. 

from careful, verbatim phonographic reports by t. j. ellinwood, for fif- 
TEEN YEARS MR. BEECHER's SPECIAL REPORTER. 

This issue is the only regularly authorized edition of these Sermons, the one in- 
dorsed by Mr. Beecher's approval as correct, and sanctioned by his authority. It 
io well printed on good paper, in book form ; it is suitable for binding and preserva- 
tion, and it is cheap, within the reach of all. The publishers have also responded to 
the demand for a continued insertion of the Prayers before and after the Sermon, as 
among the most spiritually profitable of Mr. Beecher's ministrations. Besides this, 
the Scriptural lesson and hymns sung (Plymouth Collection) are indicated, thus mak- 
ing a complete record of one service of Plymouth Church for each Sunday. 



CRITICAL OPINIONS. 



BRITISH. 

"They are magnificent discourses. I have 
often taken occasion to say that Beecher is the 
greatest preacher that ever appeared in the 
world ; this judgment is most soberly considered 
and most deliberately pronounced ; his brilliant 
fancy, his deep knowledge of human nature, his 
affluent language, and the many-sidedness of his 
noble mind, conspire to place him at the head of 
all Christian speakers." — REV. DR. Parker, 
in T}i^ Ptilpit Analyst {Article "AdCLE- 
RUM "). 

" They are without equal among the published 
sermons of the day. Everywhere we find our- 
selves in the hands of a man of high and noble 
impulses, of thorough fearlessness, of broad and 
generous sympathies, who has consecrated all 
his wealth of intelligence and heart to the ser- 
vice of preaching the gospel." —Z.zV^rary World, 
London. 



AMERICAN. 

"We certainly find in these sermons a great 
deal which we can conscientiously commend, and 
that amply justifies the exalted position which 
their author holds among American preachers. 
They are worthy of great praise for the fresh- 
ness, vigor, and earnestness of their style ; for 
the beauty and oftentimes surprising aptness of 
their illustrations ; for the large amount of con- 
solatory and stimulating thought embodied in 
them, and for the force and skill wdth which re- 
ligious considerations are made to bear upon the 
most common transactions of life. " — Bibliotheca 
Sacra, Andover, Mass. 

Mr. Beecher " by his genius, and without any 
direct eifort, has more influence upon the minis- 
terial profession than all the theological semi- 
naries combined. The discourses are rich in all 
that makes religious literature valuable." — Chu 
cago Evening j^ournal. 



Terms. — Single 
Half Yearly, $1.75. 



numbers, ten cents. Yearly Subscription price, $3.00. 

Subscriptions may begin with any number. Back numbers 

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Club Kates — five copies for $ 12.00. 

THE CHRISTIAN UNION ($3.00), and PLYMOUTH PULPIT 
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A steel engraving of Mr. Beecher, for framing, will be sent, post-paid, to any 
subscriber for Plymouth Pulpit who asks for it. 

Postage on Plymouth Pulpit to subscribers in the United States is twenty cents 
per year, payable quarterly in advance, at the Post-Office to which the pamphlet is 
sent ; and on single copies to England it is /our cents. 



27 FarJt Place, and 24 &^ 26 Murray Street, New York. 



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